this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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If a debian based distro there's several ways to copy your package choices from one machine to another, the likes of using dpkg --get-selections and using that output on the new machine with --set-selections, but probably the easiest way is to use apt-clone, which streamlines that process to install the same packages on the new machine.
As for your firefox and desktop packages, they'll be saved in /home/username (usually in .hidden dirs) - so just copy all of that over.
Alternatively, use an image cloner like clonezilla to make an exact disk copy and install that.
Or run your machine as a vm inside Proxmox or another hypervisor. That way you can have instant snapshots before you do risky things, as well as multiple scheduled entire-machine backups.
Or ansible (which I do a lot of), which can set whatever packages and copy your golden-image files over as you want. (But keeping those up to date requires a little thought)