Recently,  I  moved  an  Arch  Linux installation from one computer to
  another. I did this using "cp  -a".  The  new  computer  has  a  fully
  encrypted  SSD,  the  old  one  a simple HDD. A little bit of tweaking
  afterwards (mainly adjusting xorg.conf and installing the boot loader)
  and  you're  done. Moving the system took about 3 hours -- most of the
  time, I was waiting for "cp" to finish.

  After having used Windows for over 15 years, I'm still amazed  by  how
  simple things are in the Linux world.