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Doing a backup is good practice either way. But I've done plenty of Linux installs where I simply deleted everything on / except for /home and then installed onto that. Never saw a distribution that couldn't handle it.
You should maybe take a look at your /etc/fstab and see how your subvolumes are laid out. Maybe Cachy needs something different for stuff like snapper. But that's nothing you can't fix manually.
Or am I better off just using rsync to backup the whole /home folder to an external drive, install CachyOS fresh, then rsync my files over when the installer is completed but before I boot for the first time?
That would be simpler.
Or, even just do it after the first boot in the new system. It shouldn't hurt anything to replace the contents of your /home directory. Just copy it over and then reboot. (Save a copy of the original somewhere as a backup, just in case it breaks something.)
I would choose the rsync-->backup /home to external disk then install Cachy fresh, then copy /home back.
It's a known, clean and simple process. Why complicate things further?
yup, but careful with hidden folder like .config and a few others
Will rsync not grab those?
Edit: I am saying rsync should grab all that by default.
Yes but switching distro you can fuck up some settings... Better to copy documents downloads etc but all the hidden directories I do it selectively
Gotcha. I suppose I would grab everything and then selectively restore what I need. Having the backup also allows one to paw through it for settings or whatever you might’ve forgotten.
Just don’t format the disk. Boot the installer, mount the partition, delete the folders other than home, and then install.
Thank you, everyone!
I'm thinking rsync is going to be my best bet, then I can restore things as needed without messing anything up in hidden folders. I have a spare hard drive I can use as a lifeboat but should that be in ext4 or btrfs? Or does it even matter?
It shouldn't matter, but I would use ext4 for simplicity's sake. I bring that concept up again because if you can make a process more simple, it is obviously easier to understand and you'll then have time for the complexities that inevitably pop up. And they will.
Why not boot a live image and reconfigure partitions/lvm?
Shrinking a volume is a risky operation, so you should have backups for anything you cannot afford to lose.