Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

JasonMehmel · 2024-07-17 17:58:43

I'm about to buy another laptop and frankly, the process of reinstalling and tweaking everything to my preferences is part of my hesitation in actually going out and doing it.

I was wishing for something like a user profile, such as in Firefox or Chrome, where you can install the browser on a different machine, log into your user profile, and then all or most of the customized choices are imported.

I'm not advocating for a web-based user profile as that would work against the user privacy inherent in Linux, but I did start thinking about the value of having something that could 'save' or 'load' your 'profile.'

It feels like parts of this already exist, with BLOB themes that you can save, as well as Tint2, Conky, etc. Maybe add to that whatever unique repositories are currently active, etc. There are probably other things that could be added, like say anything you've installed from those repositories that isn't part of the baseline install.

It strikes me that something like this could be done as a basic text file that would take all of those options, save them as a list, and then turn it into an install script. Not unlike the BL-Welcome scripts, but generated from the current state of the install.

It would never be perfect; there would be inevitable conflicts between machines, legacy programs that are no longer supported but installed on the old machine, etc. etc. But it wouldn't have to be perfect... it would just have to be better than manually redoing it each time! (And fixing the glitches feels like it's connected to the ethos of BL and it's predecessor, Crunchbang!

This is in the basic help section because a) this might already exist and I just don't know, and b) it's not specific to any one part of BL.

Let me know your thoughts!

brontosaurusrex · 2024-07-18 13:23:18

I've been mostly doing this in the semi-auto mode in the past:

1. For making repos and installed packages the same on machine A and B
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1092567 … another-pc
When it fails, you can do partial install by installing one by one

# run as sudo
while read -r p; do
    echo "$p"
    apt-get install -y "$p" 
    echo
done <your.list

2. For making dot files the same on machine A and B, there are various dot management tools (never used one, so dunno), another option is to just use git for the ones you want and transfer stuff that way

3. Various other tweaks can be written down to a text file and executed when/if needed (put them in the same repo as your dot files for example)

p.s. This https://brontosaurusrex.github.io/bucentaur/ is now out of date, but the idea is there to grok. It is mostly about keeping things simple enough to understand.

JasonMehmel · 2024-07-18 16:00:51

Oh! I do like the github idea for keeping (and syncing) my dotfiles and config files.

And thanks for the lead on transferring repos from the links.

Newbie question on the script you shared: it the your.list file just a straight text file list of what I want to install? Which I'd get from one of the export options in the links you offered?

I'm guessing I'd run that script with the your.list directly in the same folder as the script, for convenience?

Last edited by JasonMehmel (2024-07-18 16:01:34)

brontosaurusrex · 2024-07-18 17:49:09

it the your.list file just a straight text file list of what I want to install? Which I'd get from one of the export options in the links you offered?

Yes, example list: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bront … /base.list

I'm guessing I'd run that script with the your.list directly in the same folder as the script, for convenience?

Yes, full script example using multiple your.list files
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bront … ssOneByOne

JasonMehmel · 2024-07-20 20:56:52

I did come across this: https://github.com/Prayag2/konsave

It looks interesting, but if it's not KDE Plasma, you have to set it up manually to begin with... which is basically the equivalent of finding and capturing all the files yourself in the first place!

Maybe someday I'll fork it and figure out what would be involved in some auto-setup features.

#1 2024-07-17 17:58:43

Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

#2 2024-07-18 13:23:18

Re: Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

#3 2024-07-18 16:00:51

Re: Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

#4 2024-07-18 17:49:09

Re: Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

#5 2024-07-20 20:56:52

Re: Saving user profiles; a useful idea for a program?

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