Rebasing from Bluefin to Aurora: Preserving Home Directory, Flatpak Apps, and Backing Up with btrfs#

You can safely rebase from Project Bluefin to Aurora while keeping your home directory, Flatpak apps, and their configurations intact. The rebase process uses bootc switch to change the system image, which does not modify your user data or home directory. Both system-wide Flatpaks (/var/lib/flatpak) and user Flatpak data/configs (~/.var/app/<app-id>) are preserved.

Backing Up Your Home Directory with btrfs#

btrfs support is included by default on Bluefin (unless HWE is enabled). This means you can use btrfs snapshots for fast, space-efficient backups of your home directory if your /home is on a btrfs subvolume.

Create a btrfs Snapshot#

sudo btrfs subvolume snapshot /home /@home-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d)

Off-Disk Backups#

For external or remote backups, use btrfs send/btrfs receive or one of the following tools:

Tool	Type	Reference
Deja Dup	GUI	https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup
Pika Backup	GUI	https://github.com/gicmo/pika-backup
rclone	CLI	https://rclone.org/
restic	CLI	https://restic.net/

Rebasing Steps#

Back up your home directory (see above).
Run:
```
sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/[repo/aurora-image:tag]
```
Replace with the actual Aurora image reference. See Bluefin Image Reference Guide.
Reboot your system.

(Optional, for extra security) Run:

sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/[repo/aurora-image:tag] --enforce-container-sigpolicy

Verify your system and user data.

Flatpak apps and configs are generally preserved. In rare cases, you may need to reinstall a Flatpak app to restore full functionality. Always back up your home directory and /var/lib/flatpak before rebasing.

References#

For more details or troubleshooting, see the Project Bluefin Knowledge Base or upstream documentation.