EDIT: I am thrilled with so many awesome responses! I’m taking notes and looking into all the recommendations. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to help me out (and many others, i’m sure), i’m glad i asked!

Hi,

I’m getting ready to switch to Linux. I’m looking for a kind of checklist of what to do beforehand. When i search online, there is a lot of advice on which distribution to choose and how to set it up, which i already know, but my question is the step before. I made a list of which programs i currently use (almost all have a linux variant or i can use them in the browser) and i am making screenshots of their settings. I have basically everything important backupped, both on my ProtonDrive and on a private server in the house. Is there anything else i need to prepare before switching? I wouldn’t want to overlook something.

(I already have the distribution and am trying it out, but my plan is to actually install debian and without dual boot. Also, many, many years ago i already used debian but then i had the luxury of someone who basically arranged everything for me)

Currently, i run windows 10 with Nvidia GeForce. I already am in the process of degoogling and de-microsofting so to speak, so i don’t use google drive or onedrive, or MS Office anymore (nor a lot of other things).

Apologies if this is not appropriate for this community. Have a great day :-)

  • Zozano
    2·
    7 months ago

    Definitely create a home partition, if you ever need to start over, you can just wipe your root partition and set the home partition as /home during the install (just be certain you don’t format it).

    Another great piece of advice is to make an application re-install script.

    Open up terminal, type:

    nano /home/user/applications.sh

    Then type in:

    #!/bin/bash

pacman -S vlc steam gimp etc.

    Then Ctrl+S, Ctrl+X

    If you’re not on an Arch distro, replace it with whatever your package manager command is.

    Update this file every time you find a new application you like.

    If you ever do a fresh install, just run the command:

    sudo bash /home/user/applications.sh

    This will reinstall all your programs, and you’ll be right back where you were before.