Honestly I would say just grab your dotfiles and personal files. For your .bashrc and .bash_profile files, you can bring them if you want but make sure to just merge the important things into the versions your new distro creates. Also look in your /etc/environment file in case you set any variables there
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I'm a bit new, when you say dotfiles you mean your .config, .local, .vim, et cetera directories, right? Seen that phrase around and sorta just figured that's what it means but right now it pays to verify lol.
Primarily .config and .vim (if you use neovim or other vim versions then your config will be in .config already, I use neovim). When people say dotfiles they mostly mean .config since that's stuff that you edit and customize to your system. Most other directories can be ignored when migrating to a new system, I personally just move my .config, docker directory, and calibre library if I'm hopping distros
Thanks!
For the future, if you make your home a separate partition, you can easily reinstall your system without wiping your home next time you get a broken system.
Good to know, I'll look into how to do that, thanks!