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My old computer (also elementary OS Hera) was shared by my wife who has a guest user. I have purchased a new computer (also Hera installed) and would like to know how may I transfer the files/settings to create a new guest user in the new computer.

Thank you for any help!

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  • Is there a reason why you are only allowing her to have a guest account?
    – TheXed
    Feb 20, 2020 at 17:18
  • Is your goal to keep the files/settings synchronized between the computers or simply copy a snapshot of them and transfer it to the new computer? The former is obviously a lot more complicated to do automatically and tedious to do manually but the later is pretty easy and I can offer my advice in this case. Feb 20, 2020 at 19:48

2 Answers 2

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Have you already activated the standard "guest user" in the settings of your new computer ?

OR has your wife her own account on your old computer ?

I asume the best solution for you would be to create a dedicated account for your wife on BOTH computers and use the standard "guest user" only for random guests which you want to allow to use your computers … usually the settings of the standard "guest user" are reset WHENEVER someone uses this "guest user", so I dont see any sense in transfering settings of "guest user" from one computer to another computer.

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answering the question directly...

To move a user from one computer to another, transfer all the files underneath the user's home directory (let's say the user's name is 'Mary' and their username is also 'mary') to the new home directory on the new computer.

In the Terminal of your old computer:

cd /home
sudo tar cvzf mary.tgz mary

This will create a mary.tgz file. Copy this file to a USB stick.

cp mary.tgz /path/to/usbstick

While logged into your administrator user on your new computer, if you haven't done this already, go into System Settings -> User Accounts, unlock it, and click the "+" (in the lower righthand corner) to create a user 'Mary' (with username 'mary')

enter image description here

in Terminal:

cd /home
sudo tar xvzf /path/to/usbstick/mary.tgz

log out of your administrator user and log into 'Mary' and verify all the files & preferences have been transferred before you clean up or get rid of your old computer.

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