Desktop, what to backup?

1

I was just wondering, i have my desktop setup perfect now. What would i have to backup to restore the pc? I supose: the configuration.nix and the homedir?

Greetz: Patrick

2

Possibly /var - intentionally not storing any long-lived data there is an attractive option as well, but if you want to go that way you might want to introduce some check that you’re not accidentally accumulating state there (e.g. https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/)

3

That’s more or less what I save on my desktop.

I’d suggest to exclude a bunch of things, though:

  • .cache (as the name implies, no critical data)
  • Parts of .local/share (I only back up from there what I need, i.e. allow list rather than exclusions)
  • Generally things like node_modules/vendor/target directories and e.g. .iso/.qcow2 files.

That’s basically it on my machine.