

For me, I tend to focus on specific directories I know I’d need data from (or that will just be a hassle to rewrite config for). I have a scripts folder that gets backed up, Books, .mozilla
, etc. A lot of things I just know I won’t need like .cache
. That folder is 7GB and mostly just the cache from yay needing to be cleared out.
I don’t backup my entire home directory because I’m worried ACLs may change or other little issues that will take more time than its worth to correct. That said, you could. You worried about something like that, you could pull the existing ACLs: find ~/ -type f -exec getfacl --absolute-names {} + > home_acls_backup.txt
and then restore them: setfacl --restore=home_acls_backup.txt
I haven’t really used KDE much, but I know it has a theme data in .local/share
that you’d want (and probably the .cache
folder as well). GNOME keeps theme data in .themes
, .icons
, .fonts
. They might just be defaults, but if you have anything custom, you’d want those folders too.
Have any other distros been tried on this box and do the same issues present with them? I think the recommended PSU combined with an RX580 is 600W, so you might try swapping PSUs. Another option if you don’t have a spare to test with is to undervolt the GPU. If it stabilizes at that point, it would suggest the PSU needs replacement. At least that way you wouldn’t be dropping money on a hunch.
Another good indicator of that being GPU/PSU issues is the fact you mention not being able to get past the login screen. Both X11 and Wayland (especially Wayland) crank up the VRAM usage at that point due to compositors caching and whatnot