do you know that minecraft mod that autosorts your inventory? is there are project that can autosort a messy file system and put all of your files of a similar nature into a well organised, well named order. obviously this would require ai that could do image, language, and audio recognition but is there anything in the works? i can imagine this would speed up distrohopping by 10x. ai powered file management

  • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
    28·
    10 months ago

    i can imagine this would speed up distrohopping by 10x

    I am confusion. It seems like this wouldn’t help much with distro-hopping at all. At least not the way I learned to reinstall OSes, i.e. keep /home and make sure to back up important config files you edited.

    • jackpot@lemmy.mlOP
      51·
      10 months ago

      wait so how do you ‘keep home’, im confused explain your process

      • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
        15·
        10 months ago

        Partitions.

        Many distros will partition your disk as /, /home, and swap.

        If you want to, when installing a different distro, you can manually format and install the system to / and not format /home but flag it to be mounted as home.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          This can cause issues with configuration files if you change to a distro that has older versions of some programs.

          • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
            1·
            10 months ago

            Oh it certainly can! I haven’t done it like this in a long time. My hopping days are all but over and the main things I need to backup are music, photos, and books. As long as I have them on some external drive I just wipe it all and start over. Still, though, the option is there.

          • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
            1·
            10 months ago

            Upgrades/downgrades can always cause issues, but more often than not you’re totally fine, especially during upgrades. I tend to declutter my home a little too. E.g. I keep the configurations for Firefox and Thunderbird but delete their cache, for Inkscape I may keep my custom palettes only. For a lot of Gnome tools, I just delete all the configuration, especially for stuff that I only use once a month. However, the major issue during that process for me is that accidents happen occasionally.

      • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
        6·
        10 months ago

        Typically you keep you /home on a separate drive or partition. Your /root and /swp are on others. When you install the new OS you do custom partitions and mount options install the OS on the root then mount /home to your home partition/drive.

        You’ll still have to install the applications again, but all of your configs and history is still there. It feels surreal the first time you do it.

    • z00s@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      Would it be possible just to copy /home to a separate drive and then point a fresh install to that location?

      This is actually a great idea but I didn’t separate my home when I installed my current distro

      • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
        5·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, you absolutely can mount a different path to /home with fstab after installation. How you decide to sort your files in /home (or have them sorted by automation) has zero influence on distro hopping.

      • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
        2·
        10 months ago

        Yes. If you copy /home to a completely different drive, do make sure to be intentional about access rights (i.e. in your new install, you want your files to belong to you again and you want scripts to still be executable; sorting this out after the fact is possible but can be time-consuming) and make sure to copy hidden files/directories (i.e. .dotfiles, which is where user preferences for your apps are stored; if you want e.g. your Firefox bookmarks and tabs to remain with you, keep these files).