I was really impressed when I got a new MacBook this year. With my previous Windows machines it was always one or two days of reinstalling everything and then a few more weeks until I had all my settings back. With the Mac I restored from Time Machine and after a few hours I had my machine back pretty much the way it was before with just a few settings missing. That alone is worth a certain premium to me.
Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#62Ansible can also be used locally. It's not reserved at all to the server side of things.
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#63I was really impressed when I got a new MacBook this year. With my previous Windows machines it was always one or two days of reinstalling everything and then a few more weeks until I had all my settings back. With the Mac I restored from Time Machine and after a few hours I had my machine back pretty much the way it was before with just a few settings missing. That alone is worth a certain premium to me.
I don't mind premium and what you(me too) observe with windows is a bad architectural decisions of Microsoft allowing every app to pollute it's shit all over the places - registry, system dirs, user/* and tons of other obscure places where app could spread leftovers all over.
This makes it nightmare to manage anything.
Mac ecosystem is cleaner and more tighly controlled.
With Windows - it's a business opportunity for someone to plug Microsoft holes and come up with easy migration/restore service.
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#64I was really impressed when I got a new MacBook this year. With my previous Windows machines it was always one or two days of reinstalling everything and then a few more weeks until I had all my settings back. With the Mac I restored from Time Machine and after a few hours I had my machine back pretty much the way it was before with just a few settings missing. That alone is worth a certain premium to me.
I don't mind premium and what you(me too) observe with windows is a bad architectural decisions of Microsoft allowing every app to pollute it's shit all over the places - registry, system dirs, user/* and tons of other obscure places where app could spread leftovers all over. This makes it nightmare to manage anything. Mac ecosystem is cleaner and more tighly controlled. With Windows - it's a business opportunity for…
I remember even in the 90s realizing that the registry was a bad idea. Instead each app should have had its own executable/settings/data folder. I don't understand why they didn't add this.
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#65I use a simple checklist on github, which contains mostly scripts I can run to install what I need
https://github.com/acutesoftware/dotfiles/blob/master/instal...
Works quite well and is future proof (plain text)
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#66NixOS can be helpful here, by making all of the non-user-specific stuff completely reproducible; combine that with Git versioning for dotfiles and a NAS for backups and large storage and your setup should be pretty easy to manage.
NixOS + Home Manager + storing your config in dotfiles is exactly what you want :)
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#67I use a dotfiles repo in git and GNU Stow. I could automate more of the setup work, but I do it so rarely that just having my config files backed up and replicated is enough.
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#68Assuming data is on separate partition or disk, I do nothing after an upgrade to older gear.
A new Mac, Brewfile and dotfiles in git
New Linux, I wrote a bash script years ago that just iterates over an array of pkg names as strings, then clone dotfiles. It checks for apt or pacman; there was a time where I couldn’t pick and kept going back and forth between Debian and Arch ️
For some reason I can’t bring myself to run Homebrew on Linux, even though I know it supports that OS now.
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#69I'm working on a new tool called mgmt: https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/
While I think it's a good fit for the general automation problems we face today, on of the reasons I'd say that it's more difficult to find solutions geared to an individual user's /home/ is that most people don't develop the necessary "resources" to manage those things, or that the tools aren't geared well to support it.
In mgmt's case, we can run rootless, and standalone very easily, so it might be something you can hack on. It is missing the same resources that many other tools are missing, so if you want something special for your /home/, then please send us a patch!
HTH
Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mind premium and what you(me too) observe with windows is a bad architectural decisions of Microsoft allowing every app to pollute it's shit all over the places - registry, system dirs, user/* and tons of other obscure places where app could spread leftovers all over. This makes it nightmare to manage anything. Mac ecosystem is cleaner and more tighly controlled. With Windows - it's a business opportunity for…
I remember even in the 90s realizing that the registry was a bad idea. Instead each app should have had its own executable/settings/data folder. I don't understand why they didn't add this.
Exactly.
Each app should have it's own directory. It shouldn't pollute outside. Problem solved.
Ballmer thought differently. Or most likely didn't think at all.