Maintaining "Portability" Between Linux and Windows 7

Question

I am using the following ways in my office's Windows 7 machine to maintain my "portabilibity" when disaster strikes and I need to switch computer while I have no luxury of time for reinstalling all my program to the new PC.

• a majority of programs I used are portable, mostly from portableapp.com, like notepad+, GIMP, even R, I extract them and store them in a folder in My document, in a structure similar to the default portableapp installation when they are installed to a thumbdrive
• only a few software that portable version is not available and I will install them as usual
• all of my working files are stored in a folder in My document

I regularly backup them all using syncback, because this program can keep versioning of my backup, and the backup is stored in a portable drive.

One day I need to switch my computer and the operation is relative simple for me: I just move the two folders mentioned above into the my document folder of the new PC, install those few "non-portable" program in it, and this is almost done, some minor hiccups can be solved by reinstalling the portableapp into the drive. Overall speaking it is a smooth process.

I would like to maintain the same degree of "portability" in my home Linux desktop (Ubuntu or Mint, I'm still deciding), that is, if my Linux crash and I need to reinstall it again. All I need to do is the move the two folder back to the new Linux, and most of my work will be almost ready to be worked on again. But I don't know how to find a Linux-alternative of portableapps.

Being a newer to Linux, can anyone tell me whether this is possible in Linux?

Answer 1

Linux doesn't really have portable apps per se,[1] but you can maintain a list of the main package names of the non-default programs you install (you don't need to list any dependencies; just the primary package). Then, you can easily re-install them.

For example, you might have this file, called ~/installed_apps.txt:

agave
gimp
openssh-server
qalculate

Then, to reinstall, do this (assuming a Debian-based distro such as Ubuntu or Mint):

sudo apt-get install $(cat ~/installed_apps.txt)

The programs will be downloaded and re-installed. And provided that you backed up your entire home directory, including the files and directories beginning with dots, you'll also retain most of your settings. A backup of /etc ought to get most of the rest.

[1]: In a number of cases, you could compile programs yourself such that they'd be largely portable. However, such a method wouldn't be useful, because you'd miss out on all the great advantages of package management.

EDIT:

Provided that aptitude is installed, here's a script I wrote to list all the non-autoinstalled packages. It is a useful tool, but be aware that if you're disciplined in using the approach above, you'll get more accurate results.

#!/bin/bash
aptitude search '?and(?and(?not(?automatic),?installed),?not(?section(libs)))' --display-format '%p'

Save it somewhere (such as ~/bin/list_nonautoinstalled_packages) and make it executable. You can then use it to generate your installed apps list:

~/bin/list_nonautoinstalled_packages > ~/installed_apps.txt

When using this script, I've found it best to manually review the output file and prune unnecessary stuff. Doing so is good in case you upgrade your system; dependencies may change, so you'll only waste disk space if you include dependencies in your list.