trawglodyte wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2024 8:45 pm
@mikewalsh
That's what I would up doing. I just renamed the bakup "dpupbw64save-nvidia-apps-desktop" to remind myself I made the save after installing nvidia pet, my favorite apps, and tweaking the desktop how I like it.
IDK, I imagine if I changed hardware on my machine, modified my partition scheme, etc.... it might not work to restore. But I think that's true for any sort of backup, whether manual or with an app. There probably is a terminal command to insure you preserve permissions. I didn't do that.
If you have certain configurations for certain hardware, for instance a dual montior setup, and you make a pupsave backup, and subsequently copy it to another machine with a single montior and boot, this won't break the OS. The OS will load the drivers for the hardware it finds, but your desktop icons that were spread across dual monitors would be forced onto the single monitor. Configurations like that, and wifi connections on a different network router would need to be reset etc...not a big deal once you get a save and transfer procedure down.
I run pupsave backup on my home computer, rename it to reflect what is inside, copy it to a USB drives and then copy to new machines. All of my machines are essentially running the same OS configuratioon because they are copied to each other. In this way I could take my most recent master savefolder from home and copy it to my machine at work, boot it up with the new savefolder, configure the network and monitors, (maybe soundcard choices and other particulars) and do a backup save from the work machine. I copy that work save to USB and bring it back home and copy it to the home computer. Now my savefolder has configurations for both networks. When I boot it it will find the right network automatically since both are saved, depending on which network manager is installed. Older pups may require switching manually.
It's why I use puppy and never have bothered with mainstream full install distributions. Puppy is portable in the trues sense of the word. Of course you could just boot off USB all the time if you like, and never copy the savefolder. But I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to having backups everywhere and on different media and in different locations.
For instance, I just recently began to delete a folder of a KLV-airedale install from my USB stick, only I wasn't watching closely and was actually deleting the OS I was currently running from my hard drive. Not just the save, the entire directory of system files. CRAP! Not to worry though. I have that OS copied on three other USB hardrives and 4 laptops. So I shutdown immediately and booted into another puppy OS, plugged in another USB drive and put it back the way it was.
I don't think you could pull that off with a full install Arch.