https://askubuntu.com/posts/9889/edit
-
It'd be a good idea to just copy all of
/home
as that contains your documents and preferences. If you just want to know where preferences are stored, it varies. Many applications store them in.config
(that's/home/username/.config
) and.local
. Most user preferences will be in.gconf
. Some older applications might save settings in.gnome2
. Firefox uses.mozilla
; other browsers use.config
as far as I know. To be safe, I'd just recommend backing up /home still. -
Run
dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages.txt
to build up a list of everything installed (or removed) on your system. It will be saved in your home folder asmy-packages.txt
. Once you reinstall, runsudo dpkg --set-selections < ~/my-packages.txt
(assuming the file is placed in the same location again) and thensudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
to start installing packages. You'll want to also back up/etc/apt/
and restore it