Looking for a distribution that I could replicate from one computer to another - eviltoast

Hi everyone,

I’ve been a happy user of Fedora Workstation since Fedora 36 on my Surface Go 1.

I really enjoy Gnome and everything is set up the way I want to.

Since I was really happy with my setup I just wanted to be able to replicate it easily through Clonezilla so that I could port it on any future computer I’d get.

Sadly, even with the help of really helpful and knowledgeable users on Lemmy, it hasn’t worked (https://sh.itjust.works/post/25963065).

So now I’m left wondering if there could be a distribution that I’d enjoy and which would be easy to deploy on another computer as I’d hate to have to configure everything on every computer I’d get.

I love Gnome but I wouldn’t be against trying something else if necessary.

What distribution could meet my needs?

  • darkan15@lemmy.world
    16·
    1 month ago

    I’m going to mention Ansible as I haven’t seen it mentioned, and it can be used to locally manage a reproducible build.

    It has already been mentioned, but as a minimum to replicate your system you need two things:

    • Transfer/copy your entire /home directory as there is where the majority of the configuration files of your system pertaining the software you use (there could be configs you could need on /etc and on /usr/local or other dir), that is why it is recommended to partition your disk on installation of your distro, so the /home directory is already separated, as if you reinstall in the same machine you don’t lose any configuration in addition to your personal documents/pictures/etc
    • Have a way to automatically install a list of programs/apps/drivers/libraries, and that is what something like a bash script, Ansible, nixOs, etc. could help you with.

    The truth is that using any of the tools in the second point requires learning a bunch, so if your skill level is still not there, there is some work to do to get there.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      I’m going to mention Ansible

      Oh for the love of god, don’t. Ansible is 2002 technology used in 2024. It’s so clunky and janky that I’m relieved I can get chatgpt to boilerplate my stuff and save me time actually staring at fucking YAML all day. Use Anything Else before your brain rots.

      source: it’s like half my day job now and I should’ve charged more.

      • darkan15@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 month ago

        What would you recommend that is not NixOS or a Bash script and can be used agnostic of distro?