20+ years ago, Lindows had a great app store that let you create an “aisle” of your favorite apps so if/when you’d reinstall your OS, instead of searching and installing all your apps one-by-one, you’d just go to your aisle, click “install all” and boom.
Is there anything that exists like that today?
I think you are right when it comes to re-installation of the packages themselves. What’s more annoying for me is re-applying all of the little tweaks and configurations for all of the ones that I actually do want or need.