If not EndeavourOS, what distro would you be using?

[freebird54]

How do I backup packages?

You can save the list of all explicitly installed packages to a file: pacman -Qeq > pkglist.txt You can also save the foreign packages with: pacman -Qmq > pkgforeign.txt Then you can install all repo packages from the list with: sudo pacman -S --needed $(comm -12 <(pacman -Slq | sort) <(sort pkglist.txt)) This will make sure to exclude all foreign packages from pkglist.txt You can then install the foreign packages manually, one by one. This is recommended, rather than doing it all togethe…

I know this method works (well) for the purpose - and once you have the pkglist.txt file created, you can rebuild from scratch very quickly! For instance, when testing the new ISO, I found I could recreate my ENTIRE setup (including theming, fonts, and all programs) from a freshly formatted partition in under 20 minutes! (fast connection).