Starting over

[profquad]

Hi, I've had a very frustrating time getting an audio driver to work smoothly, and now pulseaudio just isn't starting at all.
I use Linux Mint on a t480s.
I'd like to keep using Mint, because it's the only distro that gets the TrackPoint kind of right.
I want to just do a fresh install, but I'm worried about all the tweaks I've made getting lost, and just having to search for fixes all over again.
Hopefully, this time around, I won't do anything that ruins the system like this.

My question is, should I just copy my /etc directory to an external, so I can compare tweaks later? Is there a way of doing this?
Already saved a Timeshift on external.

[nadir]

Some ideas, not sure if i understand you correct.
Might be i have typos, don't just "copy and paste".
Also look first what i wrote at the end:

If you used Timeshift to do a backup, and if that backup includes /etc already, than you could use that.
If it was me i would probably just copy /etc a second time, just to be sure.
Something like this, assuming the exernal is mounted at /media/disk
All either as root or with sudo in a terminal-emulator

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mkdir /media/disk/etc_backup
cp -a /etc/* /media/disk/etc_backup

Some prefer to use rsync, but cp should be fine.

If it was me i would also backup all hidden directories and files in the users home directory.
Assuming the user is called user something like (again either with sudo or as root user)

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mkdir /media/disk/user_hidden_files_backup
cp -a /home/user/.[a-zA-Z0-9]* /media/disk/user_hidden_files_backup

To see the hidden files you will need to use ls with the -a option.

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ls -ahl /media/disk/user_hidden_files_backup

To compare edited files later, you would use for example the command diff.
If you are in the newly installed system and mounted the external to /media/disk again

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diff /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf /media/disk//etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf 

To see the difference between directories, you would use

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diff -r /etc/name_of_directory /media/disk/etc/name_of_directory

The output of

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diff -r /etc  /media/disk/etc | less

might be quite massive, so you would pipe it to the command less to get a better overview, than figure out what might be of interest. Might be it is so much that it is of no use at all, but always worth a try.

There are perhaps GUI tools to achieve some or all of that.
It might be you need more than a backup of /etc, i am not too sure.

---

I'd also first try to get pulseaudio to work again instead of reinstalling.
Reinstalling sound like quite a sledgehammer approach.
If you quickly create a test-user and log in as that test-user, for him it doesn't work either?
If it works for him you will have to find the according config file in the orginal users home ( /home/username/.config/pulse and same directory pavucontrol.ini sounds good, not sure) and edit it (or move it to a backup, then look if a default config file will solve the problem).
That is a first and very basic approach to troubleshoot.
I neither use pulseuadio nor systemd, so else have no ideas. Others probably will have.