Like others mentioned, request Google Takeout which gives you all your photos. I recommend keeping the original zip/tar.gz for future reference (e.g. you need specific metadata not included in the photos directly).
Also, make sure to keep backups. E.g. upload it preferably encrypted, and store the password in a password manager. Make a copy on a USB SSD, and not just the Steam Deck (you might wipe it, lose it, …).
These tools are also useful for finding large files in your home directory. E.g. I’ve found a large amount of Linux ISOs I didn’t need anymore.
Do you delete all your files on a reinstall? Documents, photos, videos, games?
Fclones is a great tool, but it’s for finding duplicate files and replacing them with sym-/hard-/reflinks.
I recommend using the --cache option to make subsequent runs extremely quick.
If you need a more interactive method, gdu is awesome. And if you’re using btrfs, btdu gives preliminary results instantly (which get more precise over time).
Fully agreed. On almost any atomic distro, /home/user is writeable like usual, so any attacker is able to persist itself by editing ~/.bashrc and putting a binary somewhere.
Yes, ~/.local/share/flatpak includes all user installed flatpaks, while /var/lib/flatpak includes all system wide installed flatpaks. Both include repository information and required runtimes (i.e. dependencies).
This does not include user data, which is stored in ~/.var/app.
Make sure to test your backup just in case on another system/VM.
If your anything like me you’ll forget what PPAs you’ve added in a few months. Or rather, forget that you’ve even added things like PPAs. That’s why I stick to flatpak if its not in my distro’s repos.