So I downloaded slackware on dozens of disks.
This is no joke. When I downloaded Slackware in '95 or '96, it was over 100 3.5" floppies of 1.44 MB each. And there were still more available, those were just the ones I thought I’d need. And before you could even begin installing, each of those had to be downloaded, written and verified because floppies were not terribly reliable.
It’s maddening. The power of propaganda is truly impressive.
Transferring /home directory without reinstalling Linux?
After running low on storage space on Windows 10 I have considered upgrading to a larger drive, 2-4 TiB. With my switch to Linux I’d like to know if there is an easy way to take all my files from my previous drive into the new one with all the correct paths configured, without reinstalling Linux?
I can see this meaning a number of different things:
you want to move your home directory to a separate partition: You can just create a new partition and move your stuff there. People have suggested rsync, and that’s fine. Personally, I’d use mc (midnight commander) for that because it’s easier.
you want to know how to transfer your future home partition to a future bigger drive: You could do as above, or you could use clonezilla for that.
you want to transfer files from your old Windows setup to your new Linux system: You can just mount an NTFS partition and do as described under point 1. I’d be wary to write to an NTFS partition, but reading from it works just fine.
My son’s Windows laptop did the same. Turns out there is a setting to make Windows truly shut down when selecting “shut down” from the menu, because normally it secretly sleeps or hibernates or something to have faster start-up times. There’s also the power another device via USB option that you may have to disable in BIOS / EFI settings.