so I got this question from a viewer and I wanted to address it on camera because it's the kind of question a lot of people probably have is they see people like me longtime Linux users we hop you know we hop from distribution to distribution all the time or in some cases maybe we don't hop from distribution to distribution maybe we just constantly reinstall the same Distribution on our machines because you guys have probably seen me address this on camera where I'll have a problem on my my main production workstation here which currently runs Arco Linux say today I walk into my office and I'm having a problem on my ARCO Linux machine and I know what the problem is but the problem's going to take me say longer than an hour or two hours to fix typically at that point I'm just going to do a fresh reinstall I'm going to go ahead burn an ISO to a USB stick and do a fresh reinstall and people want to know how is it so easy to just simply hop to a new distribution or reinstall your existing distribtion what are you guys doing to streamline that process in such a way that it's not such a headache and there's several things you can do to make this reinstallation process much easier I'm going to talk about three things that I do on all of my machines these three things I've done videos about all of this stuff before and I'll link to some of those videos in the show description but the very first thing I would recommend is actually backing up all of your dot files and when I say back up really what you should do is actually put your dot file FS on something like GitHub or gitlab on my gitlab for example if you go to gitlab.com dwt1 I have a repository here called dot files now these dot files they are all of my configuration files for various programs that I want to save those config files so I have config files for example for my bash RC my zshrc my fish config so all my shell configs because those are configs that I have a lot of aliases in you know I I want to take those configs with me everywhere all of my tiling Window Manager configs are here my emac config is here my eax config is actually quite large you know I wouldn't want to have to rewrite this thing from scratch you know that's quite a massive file I want to say my current emac config is like 2,000 lines long and I wouldn't want to have to rewrite that thing from scratch so the very first thing I would do is create an account on a site like gitlab for example and if you don't know some basic git commands it's very easy to quickly create a git repository and then just go ahead and start pushing some of these important config files to a repository on a site like gitlab or GitHub or or any git hosting service and this is something that is again it's a dead simple thing to do and because GitHub or gitlab and a lot of these GI hosting services are free there's no money involved at all right so this is the very first thing you should do because that really eliminates probably like 80% of the headache involved with drro hopping or reinstalling your existing Linux distribution is just having those really important config files the the ability to take them with you when you go now there's two other solutions that I also use to help automate this process as far as hopping from distribution to distribution they're a little bit more involved and one of them does require a little bit of money and that is nextcloud so what I do is I have my own nexcloud server and you know so we're talking about a web host you need a web host account somewhere you know you need to go get a server and then you need to install nextcloud to that server and then once you have your nextcloud server you can have a folder on your system for example I created this folder on my system called NC for nexcloud you know very original and then you know I have all of my important directories and files that I want to sync from all of my machines so everything in this nextcloud folder is on the nextcloud server it's also on this machine it's also on my home computer it's also on my laptop because they all sync to the same nexcloud server so if I change a file on this computer that file gets sent to the nextcloud server and then you know that syncs to all my other machines so they all get the same changes essentially Now setting up a web server with nexcloud it's a little complicated you're going to have to do some research a little a little bit you're going to have to read the manual I will say that if you install it using the snap package it's a lot easier because the snap package version of nexcloud actually has the web server all in one containerized package so we're talking about you know all your uh patchy and MySQL and all of that that's all built into the snap pack which does make the process a little easier if for example you're working on an auntu web server just snap install nexcloud it'll make your life a lot easier and I have a ton of stuff in this synced nexcloud folder that I'm syncing to all of my devices you can see I have a videos uh folder here in case I need to sync video files that I'm working on here at my office where I produce all my videos where I record all my videos but sometimes I do want to edit them from home well I can stuff some stuff into this videos directory and those files will be available on my home machine I also have you know writing so some of the Articles and books and things that I've written I have a org directory for all of my org mode documents so you know I have all of these directories for various org files you can see I have this Linux org file here or Linux org directory where I have org documents for everything from a to blender to get got Pacman I've got nexcloud matter of fact nexcloud right here would probably show me how to actually set up a nextcloud server let me actually open this file here in emac and yeah you know one of the things I've started doing here in the last few years is I've started documenting everything you every time I do something and I know I'm not going to remember all the steps I write it down in these org documents so you know having this nextcloud folder has really saved me a lot of time another thing you could use you could use a service such as sync thing I've done videos about sync thing setting up sync thing is actually quite a bit easier than setting up a nextcloud server because it doesn't involve a server you know and it doesn't involve any money you know you don't have to pay for a web host with sync thing either I will say sync thing seems to be a little bit more flaky than having a nextcloud server if you're capable of doing the next Cloud Server I recommend that over sync thing but both both are pretty good Solutions and now that you have your important dot files stored in some git repos that you can pull down on any machine you can just get clone all of your dot files you've got that covered now with this next Cloud solution you've got important files that maybe you didn't want to put on a get repo but you've got important files in this shared next Cloud fold you've got that covered the third thing I want to talk about is actually having a separate Drive having more than one drive in a machine and then having that drive hold something like your home directory for example you can actually put your home directory on its own drive on its own partition and then when you go to reinstall your Linux distribution you don't have to touch that that drive that already has your home directory with all of your personal data it's already on its own drive on its own partition and you know you you keep all your data your data is already there on its own drive and that makes reinstalling really simple now for me I actually don't put my home directory on its own drive because my home directory is quite large and I actually have other solutions for the important files in my home directory for example this nexcloud shared folder here that's synced between all of my computers that has a lot of important information that's actually in my home directory I also my DOT files all my config files that's that's typically stored in my home directory so I've already got a lot of important home directory kind of stuff already backed up in other areas but there is one folder on my system that is very large that I do put on its own drive on its own partition to make reinstalling a lot easier and that is my music directory so let me go into my home directory and let me go to music now my music directory here has a ton of stuff if I actually go into some of these directories you can see I have a ton of music that I've saved over the years I have a ton of classical music and some of these classical composers I've pretty much cataloged pretty much everything they've ever written so i' I've got pretty much all kinds of classical music I've got probably like 150 gigabytes of Music in this music directory and I don't want to have to back up all of that music and then put that back on my new installation just transferring those files back and forth takes a ton of time that would be a headache so what I've done is my music directory here is actually on its own drive in this computer on its own partition that way when I reinstall I don't touch that drive my music is still there I didn't have to back it up I didn't have to transfer files you know to a a backup drive and then transfer them back onto the existing hard drives in this computer I didn't have to do any of that and that really makes things very easy and I've done a video on how to put any directory on your system on its own drive on its own partition that way when you go to reinstall you know nothing is touched on that particular partition and again I will link to several videos in the show description now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this show Matt James Steve armor Dragon daroff dless gdr George Lee Matthew methos Aran Paul peace AR Vora reality for Less red profit rolling Sol last Street 10 run Ro gentu and abun and Willie these guys they're my highest tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode that you just watched would not have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon you want to support my work and see more videos about Linux and free and open source software subscribe to Dro tube over on patreon peace guys