I’m using Fedora Kinoite since a while, and I really like it. There’s just one thing I don’t understand, and have a hard time finding an answer to.
What happens in my home directory if I rebase to Silverblue? Like, Gnome and its apps comes with a lot of config files. If I then roll back to Kinoite, will all those files and folders still be there? How can I prevent this cluttering of files and folders that I don’t want to keep? I guess the easy answer would be to create a new user and then delete that home directory after rolling back, but I’m wondering if something else will happen. Thank you!
You must log in or register to comment.
Home is mutable, and the mess that at least KDE does (not sure about GNOME) make removing its traces really hard.
I should write a script to remove all traces of KDE on a system, or to back everything up and import it etc.
Find me on Github if you want to help collect all the directories and files.
Its a total mess and can cause a ton of issues. The easy way to test DEs is to use a separate user account per Desktop. Lol.
That is what I feared. Using another user is a solution but it feels inelegant. I wish there were some middle ground, like being able to pin the home folder or something. I’ll take a look at your github!
I had another idea, collect the locations (you can create a PR just listing them commented out) and then move the files to
~/.config/kdeand hardlink (ln -S) them to the used locations.Iconsets and maybe themes are also problematic and not directly KDE related, but these are the ones that cause compatibility issues.
I would also like to separate it between core Plasma (what Kinoite has installed) and the full KDE suite, and I would focus on core Plasma first.
I installed kinoite on my laptop. Rebased to silverblue for a while to try out gnome, rebased to kinoite rawhide to check out kde plasma 6, then back to kinoite 39. I think a few minor settings had to be redone, but no real issues.
Especially KDE and GNOME somehow mess up each others icons, so no this is not true.
These issues have to be fixed by the projects, putting their dotfiles in
~/.config/kdeor~/.config/gnomerespecively.
This is the main reason I don’t generally rebase on anything except versions I intend to stay on if things work well. Yes, you’ll keep your files and folders, but the updated software will write to them, and those will stay there too.
For example, new versions of Firefox might make modifications to your profile directory that might not work in earlier versions of Firefox. So if your rebase gives you a newer version, than reverting will break your Firefox profile.
(Now with Firefox specifically this isn’t usually a problem, since even older OS releases will have the latest Firefox versions, and Firefox itself is pretty stable too, but the concept could also apply to other software.)
Very important point.
This is also why you should not use toolbox but distrobox, and use a different home directory than your own.
Otherwise different OS versions etc. will give you dotfile conflicts like hell.
Did it, to bazzite, pretty painless. Yup, your config is the same. Immutable is indeed immutable.
No its not, /var/home is completely mutable, I think even entire /var and /etc are.
Ah, yes, bad phrasing on my part which assumed knowledge. The OS is immutable, but those three are mutable. I should also have pointed out it’s prudent to spin up a new user if switching between Gnome and KDE due to dot file overlap, I’d be unsurprised if that applies to other DEs/WMs…
