You don't need a /home partition. It can be just a directory under /. Exactly what data do you not want to lose? The files in .config may be different between Mint and Debian, but the differences should not be huge. Back up the data you need to keep to an external drive, install Debian on the computer, and restore the backup to where it should go. YouTube videos cannot be fully trusted, because it's difficult to know the actual level of expertise of the creators. Anyone with internet access and a smartphone can make videos about anything, without actually knowing anything. It happens every day. Any data you care about must be backed up somewhere, preferably to multiple locations. If it's not backed up, you will inevitably lose it, sooner or later. It's not necessary to have the entire /home backed up, just what you care about and cannot recreate easily. Automate your backups so they get done regularly, or else you will almost certainly forget someday and that day might be the day everything else goes south.
Statistics: Posted by sgosnell — 2026-02-06 02:56