If you haven’t hosed at least a couple of installations using the command line, you haven’t really learned Linux yet. 
The problem with copy and pasting like that is that you don’t really need (or want) everything. If you’ve broken installations before, you know that some config files, including those in your home directory, can be part of (or the source of) the error. What you really want are the files YOU made, not necessarily those that Linux made. That’s why I recommend a solution like LuckyBackup. By default, it skips ‘.’ files, copies with permissions and extended attributes, etc. I know it’s probably more that you need, but it really is a better way to go.
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