I’m a break hopper. If I like a distro. I’ll use it. Months and sometimes years. Then, if there’s some kind of breakage and I can’t figure it out and I decide to do a fresh install, I’m like “why not try something new”
You can always have a partition for your data separate from your boot partition. Then you just mount that on any distro you run and you’re good to go. I have a drive from when I used Windows for media, and I’ve never reformatted it. Your distro doesn’t care where data came from, as long as it can read it.
Yeah, I need to switch it at some point, but it’s a 4TB HDD, and my other drives are smaller. I need to delete a bunch of stuff to be able to reformat it.
Depending on the amount of data, you might be able to shrink the existing NTFS partition, create a partition next to it of the proper filesystem type, move the data between the partitions, delete the NTFS partition, and expand the replacement.
But I wouldn’t attempt that on ant data you care about unless you have backups. I’ve done things like that a lot working in the tech industry, and sometimes things just break.
I’m at that point with Solus right now. They messed up so many things when they switched to Wayland. Definitely wasn’t ready for release. Trying to figure out what to try next.
I’m a break hopper. If I like a distro. I’ll use it. Months and sometimes years. Then, if there’s some kind of breakage and I can’t figure it out and I decide to do a fresh install, I’m like “why not try something new”
Makes it easy as a gamer. My only worry is all the wear from installing my games each time with the high cost of storage nowadays.
But it’s always nice to start from scratch with a new distro and not bringing any baggage with you.
You can always have a partition for your data separate from your boot partition. Then you just mount that on any distro you run and you’re good to go. I have a drive from when I used Windows for media, and I’ve never reformatted it. Your distro doesn’t care where data came from, as long as it can read it.
If you’re still using a data drive formatted as NTFS, and you’re not using Windows anymore, it’s best to change the filesystem.
Linux NTFS drivers are pretty good, but it’s still reverse engineering a proprietary filesystem. Sometimes it misbehaves.
If you’re using something like ExFAT then ignore me.
Yeah, I need to switch it at some point, but it’s a 4TB HDD, and my other drives are smaller. I need to delete a bunch of stuff to be able to reformat it.
Depending on the amount of data, you might be able to shrink the existing NTFS partition, create a partition next to it of the proper filesystem type, move the data between the partitions, delete the NTFS partition, and expand the replacement.
But I wouldn’t attempt that on ant data you care about unless you have backups. I’ve done things like that a lot working in the tech industry, and sometimes things just break.
So with hdd prices, not super tenable but i keep all my games on a 2nd drive formatted as ext4.
I’m at that point with Solus right now. They messed up so many things when they switched to Wayland. Definitely wasn’t ready for release. Trying to figure out what to try next.