Organising the XFCE desktop setting to a degree the place it’s comfy to make use of is exhausting and time-consuming. What’s worse is that the desktop setting doesn’t have a built-in backup characteristic, so that you’ll want to save lots of your customized desktop configuration information manually. Right here’s how one can again up the XFCE4 desktop settings.
SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial on the finish of this text.
Back Up XFCE Desktop Settings
Although the XFCE desktop setting makes use of plenty of Gnome applied sciences, it’s not doable to shortly export the settings from Dconf for a straightforward backup resolution. As a substitute, these seeking to create a backup for this desktop setting might want to create one utilizing the file system.
To create a brand new backup of the XFCE desktop settings, you’ll must compress and save the vital desktop information within the ~/.config folder. Fortunately, this course of is shortly taken care of with just a few terminal instructions.
Full Backup
Making a backup of the XFCE desktop setting by the ~/.config folder isn’t unimaginable, although it’s time-consuming, because the consumer might want to isolate and replica out just a few particular person folders to save lots of for later. In the event you’re in a rush and desire a fast backup, an excellent different is to create a whole backup of the configuration file as a substitute. This manner, not solely will your desktop settings be secure, however different facets of your Linux desktop can have a backup as properly.
Understand that selecting to backup every little thing within the configuration folder will take up rather more area than simply backing up the XFCE4 information. Within the terminal, compress the configuration folder in /house/ utilizing the tar command.
Word: make sure you repeat the backup course of for every consumer that has an XFCE desktop.
tar -czvf full-backup.tar.gz ~/.config
When tar completes, transfer the file from /house/username/ to your private home server, exterior exhausting drive or cloud storage host of alternative.
Back Up XFCE desktop
In the event you don’t have time to attend for the complete ~/.config folder to compress, take into account simply making a backup of the XFCE desktop information. To begin the method of saving your desktop settings, open up a terminal and run the next instructions.
mkdir -p ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup mkdir -p ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/thunar mkdir -p ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/xfce-settings cp -R ~/.config/Thunar/ ~/ cp -R ~/.config/xfce4/ ~/ mv ~/xfce4 ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/xfce-settings mv ~/Thunar ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/xfce-settings
In the event you’re on Xubuntu, you’ll additionally want to repeat the Xubuntu folder within the configuration listing.
mkdir -p ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/xubuntu-settings cp -R ~/.config/xubunu~ ~/ mv xubuntu ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup/xubuntu-settings
With all the configuration information in the suitable place, use the tar command to create an archive backup.
tar -czvf xfce4-backup.tar.gz ~/Desktop/xfce-desktop-backup
Themes And Icons
Making a backup of your XFCE information won’t save your customized themes and icons. To be sure that these are secure, you’ll must create backups of ~/.themes and ~/.icons in your house listing. In case your customized themes and icons aren’t arrange as a single consumer, you’ll as a substitute must create backups of /usr/share/themes and /usr/share/icons.
Within the terminal, use the tar command to create an archive backup of your customized theme and icon information.
tar -czvf icons-backup.tar.gz ~/.icons tar -czvf themes-backup.tar.gz ~/.themes
Or:
tar -czvf icons-backup.tar.gz /usr/share/icons tar -czvf themes-backup.tar.gz /usr/share/themes/
Compression might take some time, on account of what number of information themes and icon units are likely to have on Linux. When the compression is completed, take each TarGZ archives and place them someplace secure.
Restore Backup
Restoring an XFCE desktop setting with a backup has plenty of work to it. To set your Linux PC again to the way in which it was earlier than you created a backup, open up a terminal window and comply with the steps under.
Step 1: Obtain your backups and place all of them within the /house/username/ folder.
Step 2: Decompress and restore the desktop archive backup.
Full-backup Restore
tar -xzvf full-backup.tar.gz -C ~/
XFCE Solely Restore
tar -xzvf xfce4-backup.tar.gz -C ~/ cd xfce-desktop-backup/xfce-settings mv * ~/.config cd xfce-desktop-backup/thunar mv * ~/.config
End up by restoring your customized icons and themes.
tar -xzvf icons-backup.tar.gz -C ~/ tar -xzvf themes-backup.tar.gz -C ~/
Or:
sudo tar -xzvf icons-backup.tar.gz -C /usr/share/ sudo tar -xzvf themes-backup.tar.gz -C /usr/share/
Step 3: Use the rm command and take away all the TarGZ archive information.
rm *.tar.gz
Alternatively, should you’d wish to preserve the XFCE backup archive information in your Linux PC, it’s a good suggestion to maneuver them some other place on the file system, the place they’re out of the way in which.
mkdir -p ~/Paperwork/tar-archives/ mv *.tar.gz ~/Paperwork/tar-archives/
Step 4: Making use of the backups ought to pressure your XFCE desktop setup to immediately change. Nevertheless, this isn’t at all times the case. To be sure that the backup is in full impact, reboot your laptop and log again in.
