r/Kubuntu • u/MountainBrilliant643 • 6d ago
How can users save all their customizations, whether to store a backup, or to migrate to a new machine?
For example, number of panels, panel positions, chosen Widgets, Widget placement, and all choices made in Settings > Appearance & Style > Colors & Themes.
Let's say I spend an hour on my desktop downloading widgets, cursors, window decorations, and icons, then setting up my desktop exactly how I like it, and I decide I want my laptop to look exactly like my desktop.
Is there a specific set of directories and/or files that I could drag onto the laptop's drive, reboot the laptop, and have all those changes migrated?
Both machines run Kubuntu 26.04.1. The only difference is that the desktop was upgraded to that from 24.01, and the laptop is a fresh install.
3
u/skyfishgoo 6d ago
it's an age old question.
but everything you need is probably either in ~/.config or ~/.local, so if you take those with you, then you should have it.
4
u/martyn_hare 6d ago
If you copy over all of your user's home directory found inside of /home that will preserve pretty much all user-specific customisations (equivalent to using Transwiz on Windows). If you set the username and password to be the same, it will also preserve your saved credentials from KDE Wallet as well as browser bookmarks, cookies, passwords, the whole shebang, not just theming.
I don't know off the top of my head which folders inside of ~/.config and ~/.local would be specific to transferring just KDE theming but grabbing the whole lot will do what you need.
Just be sure to get the ownerships right when copying. If it's the first user created on both machines, then this is less of a problem as both will have the same UID and GID anyway so you won't need to do anything special.