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!

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.dev
    1·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • chrash0@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    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: https://github.com/covercash2/dotfiles

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      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@lemmy.mlOP
        1·
        3 months ago

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

        • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          On one hand, I did go through heck at one point trying to get the config.plist right to no avail. I then found some guy’s preconfigured OpenCore image made specifically for virtual machines (I usually avoid such things, but as a VM is basically a standardized platform, I’ll take it), upon which my life has been very easy ever since. Passthrough was just a matter of copying my Windows passthrough scripts.

          One day, I want to buy a Google Pixel and run LineageOS, but I’m not in the position to do that right now.