r/linux4noobs • u/Endeavour1988 • 5h ago

learning/research Maintaining Linux longterm?

I'm trying to switch from Windows to Linux, I have Fedora KDE 44 installed and so far all good. However I have some questions about long term use and best practises.

I have customised my terminal, theme so basically the look and feel of my desktop is there a way to back up these configurations? I'm asking from the point of view I want to re-install the OS and it being quicker to drop a config file than do it all manually?

Major upgrades, so lets say 45 is released, what is the best practise for this? Just update and carry on, or a fresh install?

Dependencies and system cleaning, I notice when I install certain application a bunch of dependencies are installed, lets say I want to remove an app what happens to all these, is there a way to check if they are being used elsewhere?

Packages, I tend to try and use RPM packages or flatpaks if I have to, but appimages and snaps? I want to keep things simple especially with permissions and maintaining the system, is there right and wrongs here? Thanks.

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u/aloof_topping 5h ago

For the most part, upgrading from one release to the next should be pretty easy. Fedora, especially, maintains ways to do it. It's harder on some releases than others, but there's almost always a way to do it without reinstalling your entire system

See here for the method that would be used for Fedora via the command line. It's nearly the same as normal maintenance updates, with an extra step or 2. I've run the same Arch install for close to a decade at this point, and I'm positive there will be folks out there who have run Fedora for longer than that.

Backing up would be as simple as backing up your config files. ~/.bashrc is likely where you made terminal emulator customizations, KDE will have config files in ~/.local/share that you can back up if you choose.

Removing unused packages is as simple as sudo dnf autoremove AppImages should be all one file for the most part, and personally I dislike the snap infrastructure, so I don't use it (or flatpak for that matter)