There’s two reasons why r/linux is popular on Reddit:

1. Reddit is popular
2. r/linux is popular

If they’ve already installed Arch I don’t think there’s much difference to EndeavourOS. Both use the official Arch repos, and the latter mainly makes installation simpler.

Regular btrfs scrubs is a good idea to detect data loss/drive failure early. I have a monthly sytemd timer run it automatically.

Btrfs balance can also free up space but I don’t run it regularly.

“given the same source code, build environment and build instructions, any party can recreate bit-by-bit identical copies of all specified artifacts”

NixOS does not guarantee bit-by-bit identical results. NixOS hashes the inputs and provides a reproducible build environment but this does not necessarily mean the artifacts are identical.

E.g. if a build somehow includes a timestamp, each build will have a different checksum.

I do the this and it’s great. An entire distro takes up only a few GB. Many graphical installers don’t support installing on an existing btrfs partition (or subvolume) and want to create a new one. This can often be solved by manual intervention.

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.

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.