[clug] what is best way to migrate a whole computer's content to another?

[Nemo Maelstrom Thorx]

On 09 Mar (a Friday in 2012) around 1118 hours, Andrew Janke did utter:
> >
> > http://blog.thorx.net/2011/12/but-that-was-my-home/
> 
> :), There's nothing quite so cleansing as a good disk failure.
>

This was the best kind of disk failure. I lost nothing. (even on the
raid5 when two partitions dropped out of it :)

But I have backups too (of my entire $HOME), so I'm pretty confident
these days of never losing anything much

> Fighting dotfile cruft changed the day I decided to use defaults as
> much as possible. Since then I have often learnt there are better ways
> to do the things I normally scratch my own itch for. The original

Sure, but sometimes defaults are severely limited by backwards
compatibility (I recently got annoyed at /usr/bin/cal for this), or
a desire to present a least-complex result (clive). Sometimes dotfiles
just occur through the function of the app (clive is a great example of
this, as it has a cache file), and then a newer version changes where
the dotfiles life... (hi clive)

> writers of software put a decent amount of thought into such things so
> at least I give it a try first.

I'm not always convinced that they do, to be honest, but even when they
do, they're often targeting a design for easiest learning curve, not
necessarily most functional. 

My own UI aesthetics are unrepentantly quirky and unique...  :)


> I symlink "good" dotfiles to one place that is backed up, my current
> list is this:
> 
>    $ ls -a /data/home/rotor/00-work/dotfiles/
>    .   .bash_profile  .cvsrc	.gnome2      .inputrc	  .pvconv   .vim
> .Xresources
>    ..  .config	   .dir_colors	.indent.pro  .perltidyrc  sigs.xml  .vimrc

Yeah, I have a $HOME/etc with many configs, and symlink to them from
$HOME. In this cleanup I'm trying to do that more than before too
(though only for things I tune by hand)


> I am also constantly trying to reduce this list, the biggest offender
> is .gnome2 and .config. I also try to do all the customisation I can
> via a single script, it currently consists of this:

The dotfile explosion I saw when I logged into gnome2 for the first time
earnt itself a blogpost in its own right...



> # fix window button positions and focus
> gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type=string
> menu:minimize,maximize,close

may I recommend "menu:minimize,maximize,spacer,close" ?
It's a subtle difference, but imho, a useful one if you ever find
yourself targetting the maximize... :)


.../Nemo
-- 
  ------------------------------------------ --------------------------
                                                    earth native