I'm a distro junkie and usually have 4 bootable distros and one or two in the vm on my computers - including the raspberry pi. These scripts and my structure allow me to get a distro up and running in about and hour with minimal impact to my workflow and no loss of data.

assumes the dotfiles/setup has been run

git clone https://github.com/rballen/linux-distros-setup.git

setup for arch based distros

install scripts for distro independant apps like ruby, gems, nodejs, etc

config scripts per application

my super wonderful nodejs, nginx, php, jekyll, ruby, Sass and gitolite git repo machine

various scripts - mostly from other good developers

setup for debian/ubuntu family

use grub-customizer to set --> general settings --> kernel parameters
quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor i915.semaphores=1 elevator=noop

cd /usr/share/images
sudo wget http://files.robuntu.com/themes/grub_buddha.png

use grub-customizer --> Apperance Settings - to set background image

mkdir -p ~/.sound && cd ~/.sound
wget http://files.robuntu.com/themes/om.ogg
# for xfce (voyager) i modify ~/.config/autostart/Son start.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.9.4
Type=Application
Name=Son start
Comment=
Exec=play ~/.sound/om.ogg
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Hidden=false

and finally make sure Indicator Sound is checked under Settings --> Session and Startup --> Application autostart

• give brief summary of partitions and linking for data and resources
• add conky
• finish consoladating scripts and mark ready for use