move home directory to a new computer

to move to a new computer without having to fiddle with the settings of programs etc again, you can:

let’s assume your user on the old computer has the name “myname”. log in on the new computer and make a user with the name “myname” (in my case, it also had the same numerical user ID as on the old computer)

on the old computer:
log in as root on a TTY (make sure nobody else is logged in)

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cd /home
tar -pzcf myname.tar.gz myname

then scp myname.tar.gz to the /home folder of the new computer

on the new computer:
log in as root on a TTY (make sure nobody else is logged in)

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cd /home
mv myname myname_orig
tar -xzf myname.tar.gz

and you should have all your settings, files, … on the new computer.

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