Hello,
OpenMandriva Lx version:
None yet. Running pop os
Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):
Will be switching to standard open mandriva, pop os using gnome cosmic
Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):
Looking to move to open mandriva, need to figure out how to transfer apps and data from pop os without too much grief
Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):
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You would not transfer apps, you would install apps from OpenMandriva or third party repositories. You should be able to transfer config files for some apps. I do this with config files for browsers (Brave, Chromium, Falkon, and Firefox) and Thunderbird. I do not use Gnome or Cosmic so I leave any discussion of those to folks that do use them.
To transfer data one easy way is copy what you want to transfer to usb flash drive and the then copy it to an appropriate folder in the new system.
Edit: A popular example of a browser installed from 3rd party repository would be Brave or Chrome which are installed from respectively Brave or Google Chrome repos installed on the OMLx system.
Another way to use data from one system on another system is to create a separate storage partition. This requires some knowledge and explaining for non-technical user.
But you can set a mount point for any storage partition (do not format) using Manual Partitioning in the OMLx Calamares Installer and then that partition will be mounted and available when you boot in to the OMLx system.
I can say that kbackup works well for backing up your ~/home folder and putting it in a .tar file on your thumb drive. Then you simply extract the file to the new location. Easy. Just uncheck the .cache file as you don’t need to back that up and move it.
It will depend on the individual apps you are using.
Look in the repos and see if they are already in our repos. If they are then consult those individual apps docs as to exporting and importing data.
If they are not in the repos you can request to have them added to the repos if they are open source. But in the mean time look to see if those apps you use are on Flathub. Flatpaks work on OpenMandriva just like any other distro.
Then export the data from the apps on your current Pop!OS install onto an external drive or thumb drive.
Install those apps in your OpenMandriva install. Then import your data into those apps.
There really is not a standard way to do it on any distro. It depends on your personal workflow.
The problem with re using /home folder from one Linux disto to another is that config files can get confused and very confusing to correct everything. In this case maybe it would work for Gnome or Cosmic but I would not do this for Plasma6.
Edit: I say this because I know the OM just does not do things like other distros. The people this is least likely to work for are exactly the people that heavily customize there desktop.
All the programs on Pop OS are going to be gnome and if you move to KDE Plasma, you are going to have KDE apps. They are not the same. The gnome apps are built with the GTK toolkit and they do not look or act the same. They require different libraries. KDE apps are built on QT or KDEFramework.
I’ve been using OM for about a week now on a system76 laptop that has been running PopOS for the past 4 years. I happened to have a spare 1TB SSD laying around so it was simple and safe to put it into my laptop to test drive OM.
There are two main pieces of software that have files that I needed to copy over - Firefox and e-mail from Evolution. Both of these have directories within /home/you that you just need to copy over to OM then you can pretty much pick up right where you left off. Of course you need to sudo dnf install eveolution and what not. Most of my other files arrived via Syncthing or by adding the needed entries to /etc/fstab.
If your PopOS drive is encrypted, as mine is, you have to make sure to either copy your files from PopOS to a third location such as a USB drive, or mount the OM drive into PopOS then copy the files over. OM has an annoying concept of how to assign uid and gid numbers, but sudo cp will help get around that.
Stop kicking the tires and put in a spare drive. It’s less than $40 for a name brand 500GB SSD so skip taking your significant other to dinner tonight and buy an SSD instead. I’m sure (insert pronoun) won’t mind and will be very understanding. 
Welcome! We are glad to see you here.