I had a system failure, likely the CPU or the RAM. So I had to buy a new machine with Win 11. I also have a new SDD. My new machine can accept two more SDDs. What I would like to do is install Endeavour to a separate drive and copy my home directory from the old Endeavour install to what will be a new install. My goal is to dual boot just like I did on the old machine. It looks straightforward typing it out but I want to know if there is anything I should be warned about.
My reason for doing this is because I use Linux for a majority of my ham radio activity and there aren’t many good alternatives in the windows world. Also, I want to save my logs of radio contacts and customizations for those apps.
theres a lot of different things you can do. Including getting the full list of packages from your current machine and using --needed with pacman to skip those that are missing. rsync can be used to backup your home directory to another disk before you copy it over. baloo broke once when I did this. .local/share/baloo contents. also you should empty trash because .local/share/Trash. I’m not sure I understand completely your use case but installing linux isn’t needed if moving from one machine to another. You would just unplug the ssd and put it into another machine.
Old/dead machine had onboard Intel graphics, the new machine has NVIDIA. Both machines have a core i5 CPU but they are several generations apart. As far as just physically moving the ssd, wouldn’t grub have an issue? There is also a win10 install on the ssd since I was dual booting.
The GPU drivers will be a bit problematic, but I doubt it can’t be fixed easily. As for grub, I don’t believe there would be any issues, but I think you should have a EndeavourOS flash drive ready to fix stuff up from arch-chroot, and a Windows flash drive too for fixing things up or reinstall if Windows is throwing a fit.
Linux distributions are designed to be modular. They load drivers for the specific hardware components present in the system. Once you’re booted uninstall vulkian-intel and lib32-vulkan-intel. Use nvidia-inst -o --32 if you use turing or amphere beforehand. If you don’t omit the -o. If you’re using X11 you need to either remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf or modify it so that your GPU isn’t mentioned otherwise you will login to a black screen. I only use X11 as a fallback. Try it out and let me know. As for windows none of this applies. When I used winders I had to reinstall due to different chipset drivers. I don’t really know windows anymore or what its up to tbh.
EDIT: You shouldn’t keep both linux and windows on the same disk. Windows can sometimes remove the entry after updating. Better to just select the disk during boot or modify the order. I am assuming some other IGPU to give you display until you can install the driver first for nvidia so chroot first but this is easier done before moving to the new machine I’d think.
I would keep Microsoft and its bootloader completely separate from you Linux. Its not a matter of if Windows will break it but when. In fact I would advise never having both disk in at the same time. NEVER TRUST MICROSOFT.
While you could just arch-chroot into the old install on the new system and update to appropriate drivers and remove the windows 10 stuff, you can choose to do a clean install if you wish. A reinstall would be easier if you are not sure of the drivers you need to add/remove. As far as your home rsync is your friend.
I would just install on the new machine.
If you look closely, you will probably find there’s a fairly minimal amount you need from the old home directory. I wouldn’t just copy it all blindly.
I never said to copy it blindly only mention that rsync is your friend. I assume there could be videos and music that could be on said /home that said user wants and that is the tool I use to do those things. However even if one did there is little issue and more of a waste of space. I personally would remove windows from the one drive put endeavourOS on it and then use the other for the /home but its not me who is doing this.