Trashing It

I made the mistake both times of forgetting to back up parts of my system. If you reinstall, back up your homedir and /etc. The homedir, because if you've configured your shell, window manager, or any programs you've downloaded, your settings are saved there; /etc, because the system files that you spent so long getting right are saved there.

The first time, I just plain forgot; the second time, I purposely didn't back up /etc, because the system files I'd screwed up were in there, as well as the ones I wanted. Turns out I should have taken the five minutes to weed through which were which, and to back up only the good ones, as that would have saved me hours of headache down the road.

Live and learn.