One additional step, you use granted to expand your partitions. Dd or clonezilla both give youan identical copy. So it's really preference.

This is not quite true. DD is a bit for bit copy and gives you an image exactly identical to the source, byte for byte in size.

Clonezilla OTOH gives (and i quote from their home page) "Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk."
After an extensive list of supported filesystems, which includes almost all linux supported file systems, it does add "For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla." I hardly think dd will be used by clonezilla on most linux systems so the resulting image will be much smaller and more flexible to changed partition sizes. It will be faster since it only copies the data and not the empty space.

Since it explicitly references cloning partitions, including LVM2, and its only restriction stated is that the destination must be at least as large as the original when doing the restore it seems a no-brainer to choose clonezilla over dd for copying a smaller disk to a larger one.

Thanks to all for the replies! Very helpful indeed.

That's what I've read, that Linux is far more accepting of being plugged into another computer than windows is. I've always been curious what happens to the old, unnecessary files though. Such as all the old drivers for the old hardware. Say your OS drive was from a computer that was circa 2010. Then you upgraded and just plugged it right into a computer built new in 2020. Where did all those old hardware-related files go? Of course the OS will need to download and install a lot of new files just to be able to run this new computer, but does it delete all the old, unnecessary stuff?

Or do you just have to keep everything and the kitchen sink installed? So that your linux distro can run on anything. If that's the case, it seems like your computer would have better performance if you only had what was absolutely necessary for the distro to run. No drivers and other software that is made to run hardware that isn't there.

I'm still very new so these are things I'm still trying to learn. The "hostname" is your login name, correct? So if I named this computer "LinuxRig" and I'm the administrator with an account named "justin", then which one of those two is the hostname?

And the "host" is just the IP address, right? When something is asking you for the "host", it wants you to plug in the IP address of a particular computer?

Well... I would. I don't know if you guys are this way, but for me, installing a new OS amounts to hours (maybe days) worth of work after the installation is completed. It takes me that long to get everything set up the way I like it. I probably spend two hours just on firefox. Maybe more. I'm one of those people who likes to "rice" his distro, so it does take me awhile to get everything looking and working just like I want. Then there's reinstalling all of those programs I had.

Talking to people on Hexchat, this time estimation may actually be underestimated. Some of them claim "a month's worth of work" to get everything just how they like it. Given how much time I can spend on it at once (what with work and all) I'm probably at it for several days at least. So you can see where a clone is very appealing. If all that can be skipped, it's awesome.

But after reading this thread, I'm not sure if it should be skipped. Because it looks like I'd need to use Clonezilla or Acronis to clone to the bigger drive, and then Gparted to merge the two partitions into one. I'm kind of a one partition guy myself. But that may be because I'm used to Windows showing me partitions as separate drives. I always hated that. A separate drive is another device, not the same drive. And to me, it gets a bit confusing if you have 2 or 3 drives plugged into a system, and they've all got 2 or 3 (or more) partitions on each drive. It's easier for me to keep the whole thing correct in my mind, if I only have one partition per drive.

looks like you need to learn those terms. The best way I can suggest you is to look for hostname, ip address and similar things on the wiki.
IP address is just an address (similar to any [kind of] address) and is used to find your computer on the network.
hostname is the name of your computer (which has an IP address too) and login name is the name of the user who wanted to use that computer.

bennylavalol,

Two hours to set up Firefox?

You must be joking. It takes a few minutes.

Absolutely, takes me only minutes as well.

If its not NTFS, then fsarchiver is very effective. It also just copies used sectors.
Clonezilla comes with fsarchiver. You just need to drop down to a terminal prompt($), to use it.

I guess the only thing that's throwing me off is the difference between host and hostname. From the wiki, it looks like they are close to being the same thing. A host is a computer connected to the network, according to the wiki. So I'm on a host right now. The hostname... is the computer's name? So I'm on a host. It's hostname is LinuxRig. Sound about right? Computing terms have always been like this but I'm just now learning networking out of necessity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_(network)

Yeah I guess I had a brain fart there, didn't really mean 2 whole hours lol. But it probably does take me a good deal longer than a mere two minutes. I install some things and make some changes to the about:config. I think I was trying to say 20 minutes.

host is the device (equipment) you use (and I think regardless of any network).
hostname is the name of that device which is only used to name that device, to be able to identify it. that can be LinuxRig, although it is [usually] case insensitive.
ip address is an address to be able to find the given host on the network (if connected).

The host name is the name you assign the computer. In your case LinuxRIig.

The user name, in your case, would be "justin." And is the name/word you'd enter when booting the machine. (along with the relevant password.

One further detail, on this topic, to update your system you'll, usually, have to become root/su/sudo user

By the way, since you appear to be coming across from Windows, expect to be learning a lot in the next short while.

For example I consider the term "image" to be the Windows term for what many linux users call "clone." aka same horse, different jockey. But I could be wrong.... and happy to be corrected.

Imo that depends upon the distro. Some will, some won't. My current distro, when I am working as root/su, often asks what I want to do with the files which have been updated.

Out of interest, which distro are you thinking of using?

Welcome to the linux world.

edit to amend. After a few minutes thought I go it wrong. I inverted the analogy. It is not same horse different jockey. It is different horse(system), same jockey(user).

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Thanks again to all for the replies!

I am using Manjaro KDE. I had hoped that all the distros would "clean up after themselves". Seems like it would be necessary. I'd also like to know if Pamac also uninstalls all those options and dependencies it asks you about when you uninstall a program. Or if it just wipes out the program, but leaves that stuff. I want all that stuff to be gone as well. Seems like if you didn't get rid of it, your machine would eventually get clogged up with useless junk that wastes a bunch of room on your hard drive. But iirc, I saw a utility or something that will clean up all the old leftover files. As well as any double dependencies.

This brings up a related question I had, it's about PopOS and System76 and Purism. One of the reasons they give that you should buy their laptop, is something along the lines of "Linux will run really well on your new laptop cause we've matched your OS to this particular hardware". Well given the fact that I can download most distros for just about any hardware (obviously there are a few exceptions) why is this considered to be a feature? If I can just decide to wipe out windows one day and install Manjaro on some old computer, how is that any different from what they're doing with their laptops?

Have they somehow streamlined their OS to only have exactly what's needed to run that laptop, and nothing more? So only the part of the kernel needed to run that particular motherboard, cpu, and ram. And whatever else is on the laptop. Is this possible? Or when you use Linux, do you have to use the kernel that will run anything and everything? Never understood how that worked. Do they give you everything and the kitchen sink, or do they scan your hardware and selectively only install exactly what is needed to run that particular hardware?

I don't have experience with many of the distros, but I have been using fedora for many years and the package management system there ( dnf ) both locates and installs the needed dependencies when installing, and uninstalls the no longer needed dependencies when removing a package. There is also an option to clean up the system by removing "leafs" which are packages that have nothing depending on them and can be removed at the users choice.

Their selling point is that they can verify that all the needed drivers for the various pieces of hardware in the laptop have already been located and installed. Often, when someone purchases a new laptop, or builds a desktop, with the latest and greatest hardware they find there is sometimes a new chipset in the hardware that does not have a driver already in the install media for their favorite distro and then it can become a pain to locate and install the correct driver. Video cards, network chips, and sound hardware are among those where I have seen considerable discussion with users in that situation. Hardware often gets updated and there is usually a lag between the hardware availability and the drivers being updated to support it in the FOSS world, especially since many manufacturers do not provide support for linux users the same as they do for windows. The new hardware has to have the drivers reverse engineered.

That's like saying you should marry this person, because we have matched your and their requirements and it this person is the best fit. aka the blurb is just a sales pitch.

I would not be unhappy to learn that today is the day you decide to wipe out windows.

But then I rather like using linux and the control linux gives me over my electronic marvel.

Depends on the distro (a variation of linux- and I believe there currently are 600+ active distros).

Again depends on the distro. My current distro offers both options. When I, as root, update the kernel (something I reckon you'll be doing regularly with a rolling release) the mirror places a general kernel, which will run everything, (including running a bath for me) into my system.

It is then up to me to link - modify a file - the new kernel to the boot screen.

Of course by using a set of commands, which is recommended by the distro's brains trust, this electronic marvel will scan my electronic marvel and build a kernel which only has the those things my system uses in the kernel.

Once that specific kernel is "developed," it is up to me to modifying a file so this electronic marvel boots to that specific, and updated, kernel.

What Manjaro does would be a question best (concisely) answered in a Manjaro specific forum.

So basically you need to go to your distro's support forum if you want to know if you get everything and the kitchen sink. Let's take something like Tiny Core Linux for example. Extremely minimal. Why is that kernel so much smaller than say... my current Manjaro Kernel? It must be because Tiny Core's whole installation is something like 139Mb. And I think they've got a version that only runs in RAM that is only 38Mb. Some craziness like that.

Unhelpful?