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How have you automated configuring your machines in terms of packages and dotfiles so it works cross-distro?

I’m looking for interesting tools to automate managing packaging and configuring everything automated.

And yeah I know about NixOS but I like to distro hop and experiment so I for now know these:

  • Ansible - automating many machines, using different package names as vars and package managers.
  • Bash - the most native and compatible scripting language that can be.
  • Chezmoi - for dotfiles.

For now that’s it. I’m looking forward for your suggestions!

bsergay ,

Nix, the package manager, is distro-agnostic. Add Home Manager on top of it and you’re good to go; both packages and dotfiles are dealt with.

demesisx ,
@demesisx@infosec.pub avatar

I do this in combination with Nix-Darwin for one of my machines. I also have some Kubernetes clusters and RISC-V machines running bare metal executables using NixOS-Anywhere and some other stuff.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

That does not sound like some basic stuff though. 😆

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Hm I see, thanks. A good one when you have it installed on every machine.

KindaABigDyl ,
@KindaABigDyl@programming.dev avatar

And yeah I know about NixOS but I like to distro hop and experiment

If you know about NixOS, then you probably know this, but Nix, the package manager/the language behind NixOS, is cross-platform.

I daily drive NixOS, but I also use Nix (and home-manager) on my Fedora music laptop, my Ubuntu home file-server, and my work Windows machine (WSL) to install and configure neovim automatically instead of copying a config, installing all the packages, and running check health over and over again until everything is set up.

I just copy my neovim.nix file over (also other things like zsh.nix) and run home-manager switch

You don’t have to use NixOS to take advantage of its benefits.

hperrin ,

I’ve tried to move as much as I can into Flatpak. That way I can just copy my .var folder, and all my apps are migrated.

For other things like my configs, I use a git repo.

PlexSheep ,

I haven’t. But having my home dir be a git repo helps a great deal. The rest I install when I need it

F04118F ,

chezmoi does basically that, without actually making your home dir a git repo, it just syncs it. It also supports templating and per-machine differences. Pretty cool really.

chrash0 ,

i’ve used Chezmoi for years now pretty successfully. works on my Mac and Linux machines. it probably could be made to work on Windows. i am transitioning to NixOS, but i’ll probably keep using it anyway, since i still have Macs for work (and because they’re great laptops don’t @ me). the only real downside is that it only works for the home folder, so i have to manually control stuff for /etc, but i generally prefer user configuration for most tools anyway.

i had messed around with Ansible for this in the past, but i didn’t really like it for this use case. it’s been a while tho so it’s hard to say why.

not to pile on, but you might also look at GNU Stow. i decided against it, but it’s there.

obligatory i s’pose: github.com/covercash2/dotfiles

data1701d ,
@data1701d@startrek.website avatar

I’m not a Mac fan, but I do keep a Hackintosh VM with GPU passthrough to run the occasional XCode and the like or send a text message when I’m too lazy to pull out my iPhone. I will say that MacOS’s standardized interface is rather nice, though.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Wow, you went through hell with this Hacintosh. Interesting that you have an iPhone not Android when you use Linux.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah I see everyone saying chezmoi is great.

Ansible seems fine but also complicate many thing not doing something in bash.

GNU Stow seems even more complication than Ansible.

Bash seems the most simplest one.

Telorand ,

You can make a custom distro based on one of the Universal Blue or Fedora Atomic images.

github.com/ublue-os/image-template

You could also go to the bleeding edge, make a Containerfile, and use bootc and podman to build a bootable container.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

I recently installed Bazzite exclusively for gaming but I need to read more about Atomic distro.

Wooki ,

flakes and lock files are next level.

possiblylinux127 ,

Ansible is probably the most mature

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

And industry sstandard, yeah.

communism ,
@communism@lemmy.ml avatar

Most of my files are different across machines because of different themes etc. The only dotfiles I have synced across machines are my .zshrc, .gitconfig, .ideavimrc (not my actual vimrc because it has some machine-specific theming), and .p10k.zsh. I have them all in a folder synced with syncthing and then I symlink ~/.zshrc to e.g. ~/dotfiles/.zshrc.

ferngully ,

Chezmoi has an amazing templating feature to address different files on different machines. It’s worth the time to set up.

Auster ,

One thing I like to have with me is the AppImage version of programs when possible, since they usually work out of the box. Also helps ensuring I don’t depend on the availability of whatever package manager the system uses.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

Do they also embed the configuration inside of them? But for many dependencies and binaries I don’t think that would be a good case scenario compared to package manager.

Auster ,

There are cases where AppImages aren’t viable indeed, like with programs that require ring 0 access. But limitations exist for all formats, so perhaps another good alternative is having multiple versions of a given program, like downloading the equivalent deb package through apt while also keeping the appimage version. It would bloat the storage for a potential automated configuration, but it should help with ensuring compatibility.

data1701d ,
@data1701d@startrek.website avatar

I’ve become a Flatpak fan for a similar reason.

filister ,

Distrobox?

gramgan ,

Chezmoi looks interesting. I’ve just been using xstow.

Takios ,
@Takios@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I use SaltStack to automate my servers. Just feels better than Ansible to me.
For my PC and laptop I don’t do anything, I haven’t hopped distribution since I started using Tumbleweed a few years ago.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

I heard about Salt being better alternative than Ansible. Why? I see.

Takios ,
@Takios@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

The clear cut of state data, pillar data and formulae feels more intuitive to me than Ansible’s playbook organization.

Psyhackological OP ,
@Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

For person using only Ansible I don’t know what are you talking about. 😆

jutty ,

After some manual reinstalls and much repetition, I’ve been using a custom script for the past year or so, which I’m slowly open sourcing through a rewrite.

data1701d ,
@data1701d@startrek.website avatar

I’ll be frank - I never have, though I probably should. For me, if an application’s configuration ever annoys me enough, I just manually copy the config from a machine that I already did the config.

One day, I may set up a shell script based on Debian’s Debootstrap that feeds it a list of packages (I think you can provide it a text file with a list of packages) to get everything set up, but that day is not today.

demesisx ,
@demesisx@infosec.pub avatar

Perhaps you’re tired of hearing it but this is very close to exactly how NixOS works with home manager.

data1701d ,
@data1701d@startrek.website avatar

Quite honestly, I almost chose NixOS over Debian a few years for that reason, but I prefer the community support of Debian. Of course, that could change, but right now, I’m not in a big distro-hopping mood nor am I sufficiently unhappy with Debian. On a side note, it kind of bothered me that you couldn’t use Nix to configure e.g the layout of your XFCE desktop. If I ever transition, maybe I’ll put in some time one summer to make that all work.

MonkderVierte ,

I have a custom /etc/profile that loads /etc/session.d/$HOSTNAME-$USER scripts.

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