Brainstorming, preparing for new laptop
Hey everyone! At some point in the near future, I'll be receiving a brand-new, freshly built, System76 17.3" Gazelle laptop. My problems with the original are well-documented on various boards here! 
I refuse to believe that the replacement will have the same problems, or ANY problems, so I'm looking forward to getting my hot little hands on it.
Unlike the original, this will have a 1TB NVMe drive upon arrival--the original was only 500GB. Here are the Gazelle's specs. I'd like to have a game plan mapped out before it comes, so when it does I can dive right in with a clear idea of what I'll be doing.
It will come with Ubuntu 20.04LTS pre-installed. What I'd like to do is use its existing U system to install K, but I'm not sure that's the best choice. Opinions? One time when I used that method it failed miserably. I don't recall the details, including which laptop it was. (I'm SURE I documented them here, but I don't want to revisit that so I'm not going to look it up.) It seemed like the smartest, easiest, most straightforward choice, you know, using an existing U to install K...but it didn't work out too well.
For the replacement, I asked in another thread about using the USB stick I had burned 20.04 on--and used throughout my current laptop's saga. What if *it* was the source of the problems?
Someone (sorry, my memory's not what it used to be) mentioned using "dd" for the install; this is not a method I've ever used before. Oh, I've used "dd" plenty, but not for installations.
When the laptop arrives, running U 20.04, I can download K 20.04 on it and install from a file on the hard drive, right? I've never done that, and I'm not sure how that would work. I know I'll want to change the way they'll have it partitioned, so keep that in mind.
I really, really want to retain certain settings that I've tweaked the hell out of, like Dolphin, Konsole and KWrite. But in the past, when I simply used [what appeared to be] their config files from $HOME, only partial features were restored, not everything. What can I do now on the laptop with those settings the way I want, to be able to use them on the replacement so *all* my customization is restored?
If you think of anything helpful, useful, interesting, something to keep in mind, etc., in preparation for this, please feel free to add them! I'm not sure of the time-frame right now. For some reason, System76 won't start building the new one until the old one is on its way back to them. I said, "look, you know where I live! You can send a couple of thugs with baseball bats to break my knee-caps if I don't return the computers [recall I still have their loaner, too]!" Nope. I said "I'll give you my American Express number and you can charge whatever amount you want as a security hold!" Nope. I gave up. Whatever. All things considered, they've been really good about this and I'm not going to argue this point. It could be a week or more before they even start building the new one; I'm guessing 2-3 weeks from now before I actually see it.
Hints, advice, guidance, tips, etc., will be gratefully accepted.
I refuse to believe that the replacement will have the same problems, or ANY problems, so I'm looking forward to getting my hot little hands on it.Unlike the original, this will have a 1TB NVMe drive upon arrival--the original was only 500GB. Here are the Gazelle's specs. I'd like to have a game plan mapped out before it comes, so when it does I can dive right in with a clear idea of what I'll be doing.
It will come with Ubuntu 20.04LTS pre-installed. What I'd like to do is use its existing U system to install K, but I'm not sure that's the best choice. Opinions? One time when I used that method it failed miserably. I don't recall the details, including which laptop it was. (I'm SURE I documented them here, but I don't want to revisit that so I'm not going to look it up.) It seemed like the smartest, easiest, most straightforward choice, you know, using an existing U to install K...but it didn't work out too well.
For the replacement, I asked in another thread about using the USB stick I had burned 20.04 on--and used throughout my current laptop's saga. What if *it* was the source of the problems?
Someone (sorry, my memory's not what it used to be) mentioned using "dd" for the install; this is not a method I've ever used before. Oh, I've used "dd" plenty, but not for installations.When the laptop arrives, running U 20.04, I can download K 20.04 on it and install from a file on the hard drive, right? I've never done that, and I'm not sure how that would work. I know I'll want to change the way they'll have it partitioned, so keep that in mind.
I really, really want to retain certain settings that I've tweaked the hell out of, like Dolphin, Konsole and KWrite. But in the past, when I simply used [what appeared to be] their config files from $HOME, only partial features were restored, not everything. What can I do now on the laptop with those settings the way I want, to be able to use them on the replacement so *all* my customization is restored?
If you think of anything helpful, useful, interesting, something to keep in mind, etc., in preparation for this, please feel free to add them! I'm not sure of the time-frame right now. For some reason, System76 won't start building the new one until the old one is on its way back to them. I said, "look, you know where I live! You can send a couple of thugs with baseball bats to break my knee-caps if I don't return the computers [recall I still have their loaner, too]!" Nope. I said "I'll give you my American Express number and you can charge whatever amount you want as a security hold!" Nope. I gave up. Whatever. All things considered, they've been really good about this and I'm not going to argue this point. It could be a week or more before they even start building the new one; I'm guessing 2-3 weeks from now before I actually see it.
Hints, advice, guidance, tips, etc., will be gratefully accepted.
... I finally let go of the writable DVD, even though in MY OWN current 2015 PC build, I went to the trouble to buy & install a * good * DVD player with full capability r/w etc. But, I have a stack of quality DVDs sitting here collecting dust. Yep, it's the USB flash drive now, for me. I even use them for back-ups (but do use multiple duplicate flash drives for such, at least three). The live Kubuntu flash drive is nice because, in theory, it gives you some freedom. If you had to, in a bad situation, you could boot the PC with one and do all your work in a live session, even performing rescue tasks. Clumsy, but doable. Saving permanent work to a 2nd data flash drive. No need for a hard drive. I know you know 
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