141–144 of 144 posts
There is ssh client for Sparrow6 if you want ssh based automation. It's called Sparrowdo - https://github.com/melezhik/sparrowdo/blob/master/README.md
I have used VMWare as a base on Mac, Linux, and Windows hardware over the last 10 years. I do everything except for video conference in VMs (running Fedora), use multiple per purpose VMs at a time (eg segregate banking from client work and from email/social media), and just migrate the VM images when changing hardware. Recommended.
No need to over complicate things. I just have my ~/.dotfiles and if I remembered I saved a list of installed packages on my old install that I can go through and pick whatever I need. Could add some scripts for the things I know I need to do but that's already adding too much. My feeling is you'll end up working hours and hours to create the perfect setup (which doesn't exist so you just keep tweaking it forever).
If you remember you export the list of packages? That sounds very manual, and prone to failures. I'm surprised people in this thread aren't talking about backups. I have my dotfiles stored under revision-control, like many others here. I have a couple of notes about the setup of each host I store too. But basically I install Debian packages and that's 99% of the my install. The only stuff that I install, outside my o…
~/ is backed up nightly and ~/.dotfiles is on github, have some other configs on there too that I don't keep in .dotfiles, not that it matters.
The remember part is just that it doesn't really do any difference in the end, I will install what I need when I need it anyway, the important part is to keep the config that I have spent hours and days making mine. :)
I also made a repository for my shell scripts, and one for my fonts.
I'm using GNU Stow to manage the symlinks. I sync my shell config together with $PATH (includes hostname and OS specific $PATH variables).
Its some work, but the more you refine it the better it is going to work for your different machines.
As for imaging, I'd build a script which you'd run after install and "does all the things". On macOS you got brew, on Windows choco/scoop, and on Linux whatever package managers you use. I use Topgrade to maintain all the different package managers in existence.