this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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I frequently reinstall Linux. Is there a tool to say what to install and configure that I can just run once after OS install? Things like

  • Install neovim, signal, steam
  • Configure firefox, desktop environment

I'm using this for just me, on my personal machine.

I don't anticipate it's possible between different distros, so assume I'm reinstalling the same distro.

EDIT: thanks for replies. I'm mostly seeing Ansible and NixOS. I'll start looking at those.

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[–] BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

I use two tools for this:

  1. https://www.chezmoi.io/ for all my various dotfiles
  2. A bash script I’ve put together over the years that has a list of all the basics that I want and calls whatever the right installer is for them: apt, cargo, brew, or whatever. It has targets for a local workstation, a remote headless server, and MacOS. Then at then the end it runs chezmoi.

Now, my use case is less “constant fresh install” and more “keep my environment the same across various devices”, as I mostly run Debian Stable and don’t feel the need to constantly tweak things.