I’m utterly useless with base arch 🤣 If it works for you, who’m I to complain 👍
I guess I should have made that clear. Your /home directory is where everything user-related is stored in invisible folders. All your settings for the OS and applications are kept in there. So, if you copy that directory and restore it to a fresh install of the same distro, all of your settings will be restored. It’s been years, but I’ve done it a few times.
The only thing you’ll really need to do after that is re-install all of the apps you installed. Once you have, however, every apps settings are restored.
To add some clarity, Pop uses GNOME and is working on their own desktop based on Rust and Mint uses Cinnamon, a fork of old GNOME that they’ve significantly upgraded. I’ve used both and like both a lot, but have come to prefer GNOME.