dotfiles-example, Work in Progress..

Intro

This repository contains a quick demo for setting up a Linux operating system with 3 different ways to install applications. It also contains an example of some dotfiles configuration.

The operating system used for testing was Fedora 41. It can be easily adapted to other linux distributions from the Red Hat family.

Why this repo?

• When we need to install and configure an Operating system several times, on multiple machines, and keep them identical.. lots of manual, and repeated work needs to be done.
• This demonstration addresses that problem.
• It can help to configure different devices (ie, laptop, desktop, minipc), and keep consistency of applications and configuration states.

Operating system setup files

setup_fedora.sh

# and

setup_fedora_full.sh


# Place or file, to add, delete or change apps:

fedora_apps.json

• setup_fedora.sh

  • applies some basics OS configurations normally done after a fresh OS installation (can be improved) and installs applications defined in fedora_apps.json.
  • does not contain or apply the setup of my dotfiles.

• setup_fedora_full.sh

  • contains all the above and includes the dotfiles setup.

• fedora_apps.json - Its where we define the applications we need to install. It was made with 3 possible ways to install those apps. - packages, are the system installed apps with dnf - applications, can be compressed files like in the example. - signed_packages, contains the process of installing apps via a signed repository key by the applications provider. In this case, Vs Code and the Brave Browser.

  {
      "packages": [
          "dnf-plugins-core",
          "jq",
          "timeshift",
          "git",
          "kleopatra",
          "bottles"
      ],
      "applications": [
          {
              "url": "https://developers.yubico.com/yubioath-flutter/Releases/yubico-authenticator-latest-linux.tar.gz",
              "dir": "Yubico-authenticator"
          }
      ],
      "signed_packages": [
          "vscode",
          "brave"
      ]
  }
  

The dotfiles

This example is based on the idea of maintaining a git repository to sync configuration files and apply then using simple symbolic links across multiple devices or OS's.

# the script
setup_dotfiles

# the shared dotfiles
.bashrc
.gitconfig

• The script setup_dotfiles clones this repo to a directory .dotfiles in your operating system home.
• It then, creates the symbolic links from .dotfiles defined files, to the system files. In this demo:
  • .bashrc file.
  • .gitconfig file.
• Finally, the script will create an alias called dotfiles that can pull the latest changes for this repo.

It's a KISS example, Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Sharing public configuration files needs to be done with "some" caution, attention. Some of those configuration files can leak personal or device sensitive information.