right now i am running suse 10 and i have suse 10.1 and mandriva 2007 downloaded and ready for burning but i have a small problem.

the initial configuration of the system, downloading/installing the programs i am using and thier dependencies(if not availiable on apt-get or something equivilant) problems with hardware (scanner for example), configuring windows shares(samba) and lots of tasks that takes time and effort to comfortably start using your newly installed linux distro

i know i do the same when i install windows (drivers,antiviruse,antispyware,directx,office...) but windows is windows while suse is not mandriva

is there is a solution for this problem or i have to go through everything from the start everytime there is a new distro

ps. my suse is running greatly right now and never been better since i started using linux but what would you say about a greedy person i just want it a little faster

Alot of your config files can be tarballed and used again with your fresh install. Be carefull though because as programs update you'll have to make sure your configs update as well. Your not going to be able to get out of installing your programs again.

For some of the more generic stuff, I'd recommend creating a backup of /etc. I wouldn't restore your current /etc over the one which will be created with the new installation, but it'll be useful as a reference.

For future reference, I know that when I install any new program (and its dependencies), I use checkinstall to create a package (since I'm on slackware, I create .tgz packages, but I'm sure you can create .rpm and .deb packages with checkinstall). That way, if I have to reinstall, or I want to install on another box, I can just install all the packages I've made without having to recompile everything from scratch. This method has saved me a lot of effort in the past.

Hope this helps.

thank you for your replies
bit i wished there would be simpler solutions but i guess i will go by the list method
write all the programs i need and install them as soon as i install a new distro
thank you for your time and effort