I’ve got a well loved, highly customised Gnome desktop scheme on Opensuse 10.3. I want to do a fresh install of the latest Opensuse but would like to keep the Gnome desktop and colour scheme from the old installation. I also want to have the exact desktop scheme on a new laptop that I intend to install with Opensuse. What file/folders do I need to back-up from the old installation?
Thanks in advance for any help.
I don’t know that I would let such a minor requirement prevent me from a full and complete New Install.
Hello akarumbi,
I also customize my destop … ah … ALOT! So when you find the answer, please post-it, send me a PM, call my phone, … I don’t want to miss it … 
Actually, I do know there is at least one gnome-settings back-up program “out there”. I don’t remember names … sorry.
The problem you will probably run into, with or without gnome-settings-backup-software-magic, is that the structure of these settings change from release to release. My own experience, it’s hit or miss from one setting to the next going from one version of gnome to the next.
When I do an upgrade, I always create a shiny-new user account to go with it … and then migrate my configuration, item by item manually. There are some aspects that are always easy, such as “cp -r $OLDHOME/.mozilla $NEWHOME/.mozilla”. The goodies that reside inside “.config”, “.local”, “.gnome2”, “.gconf”, etc … I take one by one, sometimes copying, sometimes just reconfiguring the $NEWHOME manually.
Have fun!
oxala
caf4926 and oxala,
Yeah, call me fussy 
But when I upgrade, I’d like to get on to work, rather than spending my time re-customising my Gnome desktop. But I’ll note both of your advice.
I think the original theme I started out with was chlorophyll or something.
Thanks
akar
Hello akar,
I responded to your post because … well … I’m equally fussy :).
Any custom themes and icon sets you have will transfer easily … they live in “.themes” and “.icons” respectively. “cp -r $OLD/.themes/* $NEW/.themes/” … this may be the ONLY area of gnome that has not changed in quite some time.
If you have set custom icons through nautilus (right click, change icon) … urg … they way the information gets serialized has completely changed … manual recreation will probably be the easiest way …
For future reference, see the man page on “gvfs-info” … my impression is that metadata handling in gnome will be stable (finally) for a while …
Have fun!
oxala