As for the dotfiles if you are removing Ubuntu then remove those dotfiles. I always back up some dot folders like, .thunderbird, .mozilla etc. and use them between distros.
...my two cents.
]]>cfr wrote:Since you will not create a home directory when you create your user account (I assume), these won't get installed by default.
They would not be copied there by default anyways. Creating a home directory and user does not create any files in that directory.
Hmm. Then the manual page for useradd is wrong? It claims that if -m is used that the contents of the skeleton directory are copied into the new home and that if no skeleton directory is specified, the value of the environment variable SKEL is taken or, failing that, /etc/skel by default.
]]>Since you will not create a home directory when you create your user account (I assume), these won't get installed by default.
They would not be copied there by default anyways. Creating a home directory and user does not create any files in that directory.
]]>To simplify your life, check the user id of your Ubuntu user account and create your Arch user account with the same uid. That will avoid permissions/ownership issues with your files.
One of the first things I do on a new system is copy over dotfiles - even when switching OS I've done that and modified rather than starting from scratch. Mind you, that's why I have an antiquated set up designed to keep the configurations for tcsh and bash in sync so I probably wouldn't recommend it...
]]>Here's a tip for working with dot files: Use ".??*" when refering to them on the command line.
# Examples:
# mv .??* ~/old_dot_files/
# or
# rm -rf .??*
If you have a lot of 'dot-files' that won't be used with your arch programs, then I can understand the desire to do a good clean up - but it is not strictly necessary.
The only place where it would be necessary would be for programs for which the configuration has changed substantially between the version you had in ubuntoo and the current versions that arch will get you - this may lead to some programs failing to start. In these cases though, the cause should be obvious.
If you want a good middle ground, you could backup all your dotfiles, remove them all, install arch as WW suggests (without the home partition mounted), then as you start using programs and realize "oh, crap, I wish I still had my ubuntoo config" then you can restore it from the backup and revise it as necessary for version changes.
Migrating my 'dotfiles' for vim, bash, and mutt are first thing I need to do when I get a fresh install - otherwise I keep running into things that just feel like they don't work right (they don't work how I'm used to).
]]>Anyway, pacman doesn't ever touch your home folder whatsoever. It goes as far as creating /home in the filesystem package, but the actual filling of that data within /home is up to you. So what I would do is install the root filesystem w/o /home mounted (just to make super sure you don't accidentally screw it up), then just add that partition to your fstab when you are done.
]]>Obviously, when I install Arch, these applications will all get replaced, so I won't care about their config files. However, my /home will (theoretically) be untouched after the installation, but all the dotfiles from my Ubuntu apps will carry over.
I thought about just deleting *all* of the dotfiles in /home as soon as I boot into Arch for the first time, but I'm not sure if Arch generates its own dotfiles in /home, and I wouldn't want to accidentally delete those. If Arch doesn't generate any, then I think my problem's solved.
But if Arch does generate them, then is there a way to delete just my Ubuntu dotfiles that have carried over during installation?
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