After nine months of not having booted my Windows even once, I think it’s time to wipe the Windows related partitions once and for all and claim the space. The problem is I think the way my partitions are structured, it may not be that easy. I am assuming everything other than the two ext4 partitions will have to go. What do you think? r/linux4noobs -

Someone even suggested I nuked the whole thing and started again, which would be the absolute last resort and only when I ran out of space.

  • Stopwatch1986@lemmy.mlOP
    2·
    21 hours ago

    I have been wondering about this. People recommend backing up /home and then reinstalling very casually, eg many recommend a new install when the new Debian stable is released every two years. My personal files and most of my user setup are stored in /home but wouldn’t many customisations be stored in /? I have been tweaking things for nearly a year to get everything working. I wouldn’t want to spend ages to reinstall applications (flatpaks and all) and re-create my working setup. People being so relaxed about nuking their setup tells me I may be missing something here.

    • sludgewife@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4·
      20 hours ago

      your customizations should usually go in /etc and /usr/local so you could back those up. your distro ought to have a guide on backing up your package selection. but yeah i don’t enjoy wiping everything and starting over

      • Stopwatch1986@lemmy.mlOP
        3·
        20 hours ago

        ah, OK it’s not just me then. I find the prospect of having to reinstall Debian on my main work machine every two years is scary. I’d rather have the messy partitioning for the rest of my life :)

        • sludgewife@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          3·
          20 hours ago

          if it helps i’ve been using the same install of gentoo since 2007. the hard drives, cpu, ram, init system, and everything else changed but it’s still that same install. or is it? vsauce music

            • fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              11·
              20 hours ago

              Honestly, those who reinstall constantly feel like people that don’t take care of their stuff as they should. There’s no need to reinstall.

              I’ve been thinking of reinstalling my endeavourOS install to arch just because at the point I’m at, it’s basically arch, but the system print shows endeavour, and low key pisses me off. It’s such an incredibly stupid reason to reinstall, I want everything just like I have it currently, but changing the files so they think the system is arch sounds… Something I definitely shouldn’t do. Dammit.

              • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
                1·
                3 hours ago

                Honestly, those who reinstall constantly feel like people that don’t take care of their stuff as they should. There’s no need to reinstall.

                I’d take that with a pinch of salt. Over years, systems can get quite crufty and by my own experience, things like GNOME can break from upgrades even under Debian. A reinstall can tidy things up.