Can I just use dd to clone my laptop to a bootable USB stick?
I know about Clonezilla and copy pasting partitions with gparted, but can I just use dd to copy a partition with batocera to a USB stick and will it then boot from the stick? Do I have to set the boot flag or take any other steps?
First tar up your filesystem. You can use gzip to save space. Once that's done copy it over. Make sure you use a good filesystem on the USB device that isn't going to cause data loss. (ie not fat)
Keep in mind that you can't do this live and that copying the archive over will take time and the drive may lie to you. Its always best practice to run sync or eject before unplugging.
I just moved to Linux two days ago and omg there is so much to learn but something I never heard of until 20.minutes ago and again right now is tarring...what is it?
Its not necessary better as tar by itself doesn't have compression. You need gzip, bzip2 or something else. On modern systems with gnu tar can handle tar with compression.
If your still curious I would look up how to use it.
I'm on mind, which I think is Ubuntu but tbh while I'd love to learn I think it is all just too much for me with my workload. I'm enjoying tinkering but I'm getting nowhere.
Because it is in use. You technically can hot swap a file system by switching run levels and temporarily switching to a tmpfs but I've never succeeded.