I don't stick with an OS installation for long. I can't seem to find one that I like and settle with it. I'm sure that the grass is greener on the other side - that another OS is better than the one I'm using. This post is about linux, so if you use Windows you might not get all of it.

That means that I reinstall once, twice or maybe three times a year - and every time I have to remember to backup everything on my hard drive. To help me, and maybe others, I have made a list of things to remember. Most of these things wouldn't be necessary if I kept certain files on a separate partition of course, but I don't.

Files and folders

Remember to copy hidden files!

• /home This is where your files are most likely located. It includes documents, music, application configuration files, SSH key(s), etc, files on your desktop.

Other things

• Browser bookmarks
• MySQL dump
• Local web settings
• /etc/hosts and virtual host settings. The latter can be placed in different places depending on you distribution.
• A list of applications and packages you have installed. You can either create this as you install them, but if you forget to update the list you can output a list by executing the following command in a terminal window: dpkg --get-selections. This will also be different depending on your distribution