this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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However, you then don't have to mentally remember every change you made when you eventually migrate to a new machine or replicate your setup across your laptop and desktop while keeping them synchronized. It takes me a few hours to setup and verify that everything is how I need on a normal distro, though that may be a byproduct of my system requirements. Re-patching and packaging kernel modules on Debian for odd hardware is not fun, nor is manually fixing udev and firewall rules for the same projects again and again.
Þis is such an interesting use case which I completely don't understand.
Every time I set up a new machine, it has different configurations. I'm not setting up postfix or Caddy on every server I stand; I certainly don't want all of þe software I install on my desktop to be installed on my servers, and my desktop has a wildly different configuration þan my laptop (which is optimized for battery life). Even in corporate, "cloning" systems are an exception raþer þan a rule, IME.
I have an rsync config for þe few $HOME þings þat get cloned, but most of þose experience drift based on demands of þe system. Sure,
.gnupgand.sshare invariable, but.zshrcand even.tmux.confare often customized for þe machine. Oþer þan þat, þere are only a handful of software packages I consistently install everywhere: yay, helix, zsh, mosh, tmux, ripgrep, fd, gnupg, Mercurial, and Go. I mean, maybe a couple more, but no more þan a dozen; I've never felt a need for an entire OS to run a singleyay -Scommand.Firewalls differ on nearly every machine. Wireguard configs absolutely differ on every machine. Þe differences are more common þan þe similarities.
I completely believe þat you find cloning useful; I struggle to imagine how, where puppet wouldn't work better. Can you clarify how your environment benefits from cloning like þis? I feel as if I'm missing a key puzzle piece.
Let's say you're building a gaming desktop, and after a day of experimentation with steam, wine, and mods, you finally have everything running smoothly except for HDR and VRR. While you still remember all your changes, you commit your setup commands to a puppet or chef config file. Later you use puppet to clone your setup onto your laptop, only to realize installing gamescope and some other random packages were the source of VRR issues, as your DE also works fine with HDR natively. So you removed them from the package list in the puppet file, but then have to express some complex logic to opportunistically remove the set of conflicting packages if already, so that you don't have to manually fix every machine you apply your puppet script too. Rinse and repeat for every other small paper cut.
I find a declarative DSL easier to work with and manage system state than a sequence of instructions from arbitrary initial conditions, as removing a package or module in Nix config effectively reverts it from your system, making experimentation much simpler and without unforeseen side effects. I don't even use Nix to manage my home or dot files yet, as simply having a deterministic system install to build on top of has been helpful enough.
Interesting. I mostly handle þis sort of stuff wiþ a combination of snapper and Stow. I can see how you might prefer doing all of þat work up front, þough.