I recently started uses dotbot for managing dot files across my systems. It sounds very similar, in terms of the simplicity of the implementation, to yadm. You define a config file in yaml or json and run the “install” script which calls the dotbot utility, passing in your config file. With a simple change to the install script, I’ve been able to create multiple config files, one per environment (work, home, linux, mac, etc.) and I’ve been thinking about how I could automatically sync changes to git whenever I edit a config file. Leaning towards setting up an autocmd in neovim to automatically commit and push changes on save when I have one of the config files open. Just not yet sure how to do this in a way that would only run the sync for the configs and not every json or yaml file on my system. I’ve only ever set up autocmds for specific file extensions but the syntax leads me to believe it’s flexible enough that any arbitrarily specific file name or path could work the same.

This sounds really similar to how I do things but I use Ansible. What are the advantages to something like yadm, that is specifically designed for dot file management, and a generic config management utility like Ansible?

There’s a difference between complaining and providing constructive feedback. This post falls in the former category. If you are a user of a free product and you don’t like how it works, you are entitled to a full, no questions asked, refund. You’re welcome to make suggestions but devs who work hard to provide something at no cost and on their own time owe nobody anything. I’ve seen this play out year after year in the open source community and it’s led to a lot of very good projects shutting down when the developer gets fed up with the demands and behavior of the community of users.

I run Ubuntu on a 2011 MacBook Air. I have to believe a 2012 Pro would also run it without issue

I think reality lies somewhere in the middle. Yes you have to read and yes you have to configure things but the docs are all on the wiki. There’s a point where this is easier than figuring out how to undo the defaults on, say, Ubuntu and do your own thing without official documentation on it.

Honestly… I don’t get this. It’s a bit more work than other distros but I think that Linux users often get to a point in their Linux journey where customizing a system with defaults is more difficult than just starting from a blank slate.

Are we just going to pretend Debian doesn’t exist?

So turn my argument around and replace performance with disk capacity. Cost per gigabyte is so low now that you’ll end up spending more money in electricity compiling the dependency out than you would by having the disk space to not worry about it in the first place.

The irony of the “compiling software on modern hardware isn’t bad at all” argument for Gentoo is that the same hardware hardly benefits from custom compiled software. There was a time when hardware was slow and performance improvements could be made, but that was also back when it took ages to compile software, so there was a trade off of time taken up front for performance during real time usage.

If you want to learn Linux internals, build a system using Linux From Scratch. If you want a system that’s maintainable and highly customizable, run Arch Linux. IMO, Gentoo no longer really has a niche.