I am using the following ways in my office's Windows 7 machine to maintain my "portabilibity" when disaster strikes and I need to switch computer while I have no luxury of time for reinstalling all my program to the new PC.

• a majority of programs I used are portable, mostly from portableapp.com, like notepad+, GIMP, even R, I extract them and store them in a folder in My document, in a structure similar to the default portableapp installation when they are installed to a thumbdrive
• only a few software that portable version is not available and I will install them as usual
• all of my working files are stored in a folder in My document

I regularly backup them all using syncback, because this program can keep versioning of my backup, and the backup is stored in a portable drive.

One day I need to switch my computer and the operation is relative simple for me: I just move the two folders mentioned above into the my document folder of the new PC, install those few "non-portable" program in it, and this is almost done, some minor hiccups can be solved by reinstalling the portableapp into the drive. Overall speaking it is a smooth process.

I would like to maintain the same degree of "portability" in my home Linux desktop (Ubuntu or Mint, I'm still deciding), that is, if my Linux crash and I need to reinstall it again. All I need to do is the move the two folder back to the new Linux, and most of my work will be almost ready to be worked on again. But I don't know how to find a Linux-alternative of portableapps.

Being a newer to Linux, can anyone tell me whether this is possible in Linux?