/home got all your desktop environment settings as well as your data.
/etc got all your system settings, including networks available to all users - but restoring this directory on a new host need to be with great care
/var keeps a lot of application/service/runtime system data, as well as logs. Flatpak apps available to all users are also here, but no user data. This directory is great to have a backup of, but only to extract various specific data you realise you really need later on.
/opt and /usr/local are typically the end point for proprietary applications or external third-party software vendors shipping data outside of the ordinary repositories. Normally it makes little sense preserving them, unless you know some of the software uses these areas to save user/runtime data (which is not what these directories are intended for - but third-party vendors are too often ignorant to such advices).
I would also suggest to collect a list of all installed packages (dpkg -l, rpm -qa, etc) as well as all installed Flatpaks/snaps. If you notice you're missing something but can't tell exactly what, such lists can help solve it much quicker.
If you switch distro vendor or there is a larger version jump in the applications/desktop environments in your migration, be careful about $HOME/.config and $HOME/.local. Often it's good to use this as an opportunity to clean up a bit, and just copy over data you see you can reuse. In some cases, some extensions to programs may not work as well on the new host, causing instabilities or sluggishness.
We love to see it--community-created harm reduction infrastructure in the face of the alarming integration of AI agents into the Windows operating system (which is currently the most reckless deployment environment) <3
Just made a 559.5MB video shrink to 56.1MB using this one line command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 28 -preset slow -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4
A big shout out to @ffmpeg!
מסיבת שחרור דביאן טריקסי ויומולדת דביאן
15 באוגוסט 2025, 11:00:00 IDT - GMT+3 - דומיניק, 5252204, Ramat Gan, Israel https://even.tooot.im/events/a526e551-c113-40d9-a42e-7333994524dc
An Israeli mathematician and FOSS enthusiast. A member of this instance since May 2019.