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Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

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Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#131

Post by cannonedhamster »

gesman wrote: post #63
Ididntdothis wrote: post #61

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.

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…

Yeah... Mac is so clean that's why everything regarding transferring devices is such a PITA. It takes hours to figure out the arcane undocumented ways to fix whatever's broken on a Mac because they internationally hide or break their own devices. Seriously you can't even replace hard drives anymore on a Mac. Here's a fun one, try transferring family sharing to a new owner because say the previous owner died without losing everything. Try moving a child without access to the previous owners device, or even dropping the child from family sharing. Everything iOS user management related just plain sucks. I'm glad they're finally fixing the hot mess that is iTunes. Working on iOS or Mac is closer to bring a techpriest than a techie, understand nothing just chant the magic words. Give me Windows or Arch Linux any day of the week. I'm actually pretty sad the Ubuntu phone stopped being developed.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#132

Post by jchw »

mkingston wrote: post #114
jchw wrote: post #27

NixOS 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 is great. I use it as my daily driver. But. In my experience, your distro will never have all the software you would like in its repos. And I've found this is true of NixOS also. So it should be mentioned that some software does not play nicely with it [0][1]. Because some things will be missing from distro repos, packaging is, to me, quite a valuable skill. Compare, for example, the packages for autorandr for…

I’ve had no issue contributing to fix small holes in NixOS, and Docker covers the rest. So far the only thing that I’ve found genuinely challenging is getting complex binary software running. I have a Nix expression for IDA free but it can only use bundled Qt. VMWare Workstation I outright can’t use, which is a shame since I have a Pro license, but it woke me up to how great KVM is, so there’s that.

I would not recommend NixOS to everyone, but I definitely would recommend it to the type of person who wants to automate their system.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#133

Post by haolez »

andreareina wrote: post #89
SomeOldThrow wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wintendo?

Presumably a windows-based gaming box, probably in a small-form-factor case with middle-of-the-road hardware.

Yes, but in my case, the hardware is just an old laptop.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#134

Post by Ididntdothis »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #131
gesman wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

Yeah... Mac is so clean that's why everything regarding transferring devices is such a PITA. It takes hours to figure out the arcane undocumented ways to fix whatever's broken on a Mac because they internationally hide or break their own devices. Seriously you can't even replace hard drives anymore on a Mac. Here's a fun one, try transferring family sharing to a new owner because say the previous owner died without l…

I can see how the Mac is not all golden but I still think it’s much better than windows.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#135

Post by e12e »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #130
e12e wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer https://scoop.sh for windows - although I've yet to try it for service/server installs. But for personal tools, it feels a lot like using apt - but geared towards installation in the home dir (like xstow). As far as I can tell scoop does support installs for multiple users/services too, though.

To be clear regarding multiple computers and servers so doesn't chocolatey, which is the the actual name of the app the parent post is using choco is the call to the package manager. I'm a little worried about bypassing UAC on Windows with Scoop but it's always good to have options.

I think I'd rather say "sidestep" UAC - if you drop an exe in your "documents" folder, there's no UAC prompt. Scoop doesn't write to protected areas by default.

I suppose it's entirely possible to change this via draconian policies (to have the equivalent of mounting home noexec) - and conversely, for global installs - you need to abide by UAC in the form of "sudo":

https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Global-Installs

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#136

Post by JoshuaRLi »

corndoge wrote: post #36

If on *nix, gnu stow + git is the holy grail (imo). https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow-to...

Shameless plug: I rewrote the "dotfile-relevant" featureset of GNU stow in plain python as a PoC of a simpler batch symlinker: https://github.com/joshuarli/sym-prototype

It's worked really well for me. Used to use stow.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#137

Post by pknopf »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #102
gitgud wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, thanks for the detailed response. Yes it sounds like they've taken great care for reproducibility, which I greatly appreciate. Sounds very similar to Docker's philosophy, where changes to the system produce incremental changes to the system image and all dependencies are strictly controlled. What else do I need to be convinced to leave my Ubuntu system for NixOS?

Docker tries to solve these problems only on the surface. Nothing in a Dockerfile guarantees reproducability. Try docker build of you favorite Dockerfile today and next week. The images probably won't be the same. Whereas NixOS allows you to build the exact same system now and whenever you want. Although, you'd have to pin the nixpkgs you are using.

Sure, they won't be the same, but they will be damn close. We aren't looking for the same md5 checksums. That goal isn't worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#138

Post by pknopf »

gitgud wrote: post #98
jchw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider reading the NixOS documentation if you would like to learn more, because it’s worth it imo, but no, Debian is a different case. NixOS doesn’t just manage packages, it manages the entire system holistically. You effectively have a single configuration file (or multiple) that configure every package, service, mount, ramdisk, driver, etc. If I delete everything but my home folder, my configuration file can be u…

Wow, thanks for the detailed response. Yes it sounds like they've taken great care for reproducibility, which I greatly appreciate. Sounds very similar to Docker's philosophy, where changes to the system produce incremental changes to the system image and all dependencies are strictly controlled. What else do I need to be convinced to leave my Ubuntu system for NixOS?

Don't leave Ubuntu. Boot your Ubuntu Docker images bare metal.

https://godarch.com/

https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes

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