Formatting? Not anymore!
So I just noticed something kind of funny. I’ve been using GNU/Linux (Debian to be exact) for about 6 years now. Prior to that, I had used all of the various flavors of Windows. And in all that time, I would usually format my Windows partition and start from scratch every 6 months or so. The system would just become mostly unusable after a while, and there was no effective way of fixing it in a reasonable amount of time, so I’d just wipe everything out and start over. If I made it 9 months, I was shocked.
I have not once yet had to format my Linux partitions. I’ve switched drives a number of times, and done all sorts of things with various partitions, but I’m still using essentially the exact same installation I’ve always had. I’ve had to reinstall my packages a few times (two commands and I’m done), but all of my configuration files have always stayed intact, and I’ve never had any real problems. I must say that that’s quite nice. 
