Is there a small (and readily-identifiable) set of files or folders that I can copy from that to the other machine, and then use to replace their counterparts on that machine - such that the first machine's configuration is replicated with minimal additional effort?
If these are in the same network you can use scp to do a copy over the network. Otherwise the easiest method is to use an on-line service like g-drive on each machine.
Another option but a little difficult is to use git. That way you can store all changes and commit it to the other machine with a method to restore the old situation/
But a warning: this generally ONLY works if the machine are copies of eachother. Version differences (like mysql 5.6 and mysql 8) can mess this up.
I acknowledge that where files differ between computers on account of hardware differences they might by necessity remain different. But in principle I would expect that many settings and preferences might be replicated in this way.
There is a very nice tool called diff. Put 2 files (or 2 directories) behind it and it will show a list of differences from both files (so what file1 lacks from file2, what file2 lacks from file1 and what differs on lines that both have).
The way we do it: do a diff, copy diff result to a text file and manually add the differences. Yes, can be a bit of work but you will learn and remember what you did. Copy-ing a file over another file will have you waste time finding that 1 setting that should not have been copied.
account of hardware differences they might by necessity remain different.
Not for normal software. This would apply to drivers and the display settings. But those need to be left as us on each machine if the hardware is different.
