I think the least that distros can do, is allow listing all packages and system settings in config files like .toml, rather than having to type in every single package to install, or click through system setting GUIs to setup. Would that require using a whole programming language or system like NIx?
While NixOS works much differently from most distros, that’s the only reason I use it: package and system settings in text files. If I fix something, it’s fixed permanently, I don’t need to hunt down files in random directories if I want to change a setting. If I ever need to reinstall the OS I don’t have to write dnf install every single damn package and manually setup all that up all over again. Having daily-drove Windows macOS & Fedora as throughout the years, my setups have felt hacky as well as houses of cards as I’ve wanted or had to set them up again (I don’t mean Fedora specifically, but distros in general).
Basically it feels insane that it’s the way most linux users and servers in the world operate. If I, a humble computer hobbyist can figure out Nix, why don’t more users do so, and why is Nix so niche?
For what its worth, many package managers support some method of exporting a list of installed packages to a file (or in a way that can be easily piped to a file), and its not difficult to pipe a file of packages into a shell loop to get the behavior as described.
Native support in the package manager would be nice, sure, but the Unix philosophy of providing tools that can easily augment each other to solve problems means this is generally a trivial thing to implement by anyone in a way that works best for their use case.
its not difficult to pipe a file of packages into a shell loop to get the behavior as described
It’s possible, but “not difficult” is a bit of a stretch. FWIW I’ve used this in the past, among other hacky solutions that don’t always work as expected:
# Print packages installed from different origins. # Exclude standard Ubuntu repositories. grep -H '^Origin:' /var/lib/apt/lists/*Release | grep -v ' Ubuntu$' | sort -u \ | while read -r line; do origin=${line#* } echo $origin: list=${line%%:*} sed -rn 's/^Package: (.*)$/\1/p' ${list%_*Release}*Packages | sort -u \ | xargs -r dpkg -l 2>/dev/null | grep '^.i ' echo done
You want ansible
NixOS?
I’d love having a file that lists all software like in nix. It has always been a miracle to me why I don’t have a history of installed packages. Before I moved to atomic fedora, I created a shell script that was like “sudo apt install openssh \ yt-dlp \ firefox”. With this I would’ve known what I had installed previously. Since packages are built on top of the system image on atomic distros, they have to keep track now and I don’t have to do it anymore.
To me, nix is still young in the sense that it is not as mature and user friendly as other distros. There are still “3 major different” ways to use nix. (I actually have no idea how many ways but it seems like you can do everything). It needs to be very simple.
I actually use home manager on my device and the package landscape is still not as reliable as on fedora, in my experience.
You could build a Debian installation with user-defined list of packages since way back in 2010. It’s just a bit too technical for an average spreadsheet cowboy who decided to ditch M$ Losedows.
Also, Docker does exactly what you describe, just inside the VM. There’s a whole ass new position for Dockerscript coders, called devops or something. I think there should be an easy way to install Docker image onto the real hardware with no Docker inbetween too, this question deserves researching.
<packagemanager1> list >> apps.txt<packagemanager2> list >> apps.txt<packagemanager3> list >> apps.txt…As a non-Nixer I completely share your frustration. Immutability, i.e. tracking of config changes, is so obviously a good idea. It’s high time it became universal.
Tell me you’re a Nix fan without telling me you’re a Nix fan.
