Easy ways to copy user settings across multiple Ubuntu installations?

Question

I have my Ubuntu profiles at several PCs: desktop at home, laptop, 2 computers at work. It starts bothering me to re-tune the same things on each computer I work at.

When I start working with another Ubuntu installation, I'd like to have a possibility to just copy user settings from my own profile at another computer. By settings I mean

• panels
• world clock and weather settings (I have several cities there and metric units)
• keyboard layouts
• application settings if possible

I guess, this essentially means copying the dot folders in ~, but is it all?

If I do this over Internet, how can I encrypt it? What shouldn't be copied for security reasons, and what and how can be skipped? (like Opera/Mozilla cache)

Answer 1

What you mentioned, are basically the .gconf, .gnome folders, everything related to gnome. Basically you should just select all .* folders, and deselect what you dont need. (Beware. .local and .config contains more application configs in one folder. Go in them , check what you need.) Opera cache can be found in ~/.opera/cache for example (but you can remove the "icons" ; "opcache" ; "thumbnails" ; "temporary downloads" folders also). For Firefox, you can find them in .mozilla/firefox/profiles/.../. Its only the "cache" folder here. | Over the internet, you can use sftp (if you have SSH on the other machine) or if you want to put it on a public site, just use truecrypt for example. (Or rar with password. I'd prefer the truecrypt method.)

Thats all. By the way, you can use Opera's Link (its in the bottom-left corner), and Mozilla's Weave extension to keep in sync.

Answer 2

A follow-up question: Would there be any way of keeping those files in sync by e.g. using the new Ubuntu One file storage service?

Answer 3

I am using Unison to sync my full* home folder between desktop and laptop machines, but it is also possible to sync single files or folders. There is some Ubuntu related documentation here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Unison

*excluding X11-Metafiles that cause trouble when being synced