[prabir]

Over the years I have scripted my arch linux setup. https://github.com/prabirshrestha/simple-arch-installer

[overbytecode]

i wish there was a way to do this declaratively, like:

“here is the partition structure i want, here is the filesystem, the users, the packages i need installed and the services i need running”

Setting up machines and customizing installations would be a breeze.

[grudg3]

You can, I'm going through this exercise now. Look at nixos-anywhere and disko. It's not easy though, NixOS is a rabbit hole.

[bravetraveler]

Ansible is pretty good at this. A huge library of Python-fu that takes declarative statements on how things should be

Doing some things idempotently can be an interesting challenge

[whalesalad]

I believe this is the goal of nixos but I haven’t been able to get beyond the syntax.