• LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 months ago

    you can (at least in theory) copy your centralized exact configuration to another computer and get an OS that behaves exactly the same and has all the same packages.

    As can you with grepping your history of apt commands? And back up that to a file of a few dozen kilobytes too.

    Am I stupid?

    • sus@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      assuming you have never used anything except apt commands to change the state of your system. (and are fine with doings superfluous changes eg. apt install foo && apt remove foo)

      • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 months ago

        Maybe that’s what I’m missing then. So with NIX, I need to make all config changes through it? I can’t change any config files myself? Or start a program with a certain flag?

        • sus@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          with nixos, the states of all the config files are collected into the nix configuration which you can modify manually. And if there’s something that can’t be handled through that, I think the common solution is to isolate the “dirty” environment into a vm or some other sort of container that I think comes with nixos

          (and there’s always going to be “data” which isn’t part of the “configuration” … which can just be used as a configuration for individual applications)

          • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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            3 months ago

            with nixos, the states of all the config files are collected into the nix configuration which you can modify manually.

            Okay now that’s cool. Now I’m getting it.

            I guess that happens even if you install nix in another OS?