I like doing a fresh install of Linux/BSD/macOS every 3-6 months. My tools/flow are opinionated, but outlined below: For configs / dotfiles: https://pypi.pyth

I like doing a fresh install of Linux/BSD/macOS every 3-6 months. My tools/flow are opinionated, but outlined below: For configs / dotfiles: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/dotfiles https://pypi.python.org/pypi/dotfiles I keep my personal config @ https://github.com/tony/.dot-config https://github.com/tony/.dot-config if you want to glance or copy/paste from it (MIT-licensed). Another trick is partitioning. Keep media files in a separate partition. Also great if you dual boot. rsync + ssh for copying files from other machines: http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html I use vcspull (http://vcspull.git-pull.com http://vcspull.git-pull.com), an app I wrote, to re-clone my projects to the same familiar directories. Keep books on Kindle. Have your own personal self-hosted git with gogs (https://github.com/gogits/gogs https://github.com/gogits/gogs). You'll need at least the 10/hr DigitalOcean account though, or else compiling will fail due to memory limitations. I use digital ocean extensively to host old old projects on the cheap. Its like what dreamhost used to be in 2006.