this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
16 points (83.3% liked)

Arch Linux

8459 readers
1 users here now

The beloved lightweight distro

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This installation of arch is 2 years old at this point and there's nothing wrong with it and I want to do a clean reinstall to feel more fresh. But I've been constantly delaying it for a long time because I'm scared breaking something and also not having my laptop fully functional for even a day isn't a pleasant thought.

The benefits I think is being able to handpick which files I want to keep and which packages I would reinstall since the thought of how many files and packages are left over from when I momentarily needed them is really unpleasent. But this habit of reinstalling the OS as a cleanup method might be a bad one I've brought myself from the time I used windows which was justified back then but it may no longer be here since I can achieve what I want with a much more simple and less risky method

So am I being an idiot here? Or should I go for it?

Edit: I do have bleachbit but the benefit of a reinstall is that only system files, essential packages and my personal files are kept (actually copied out, formatted and copied back in for my files). These two aren't the same

Edit 2: Thank you everyone for their answers, it's clear that I don't have that much reason to wipe my system at the moment. It might be a better learning experience to look for orphan files and packages

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] ColdWater@lemmy.ca -3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I reinstall my system almost every 5 months, idk why but seeing my system has more than 1200+ packages installed it bugging me so much so I wipe everything and reinstall

Oh, then the most heavy version of Garuda Linux is for you. I think it used to come with close to 2000