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!

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    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@infosec.pubEnglish
      9·
      5 months ago

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

      • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        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.