Small digital backpack

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linux distro programming productivity travel

I am an adventure lover in the misty world of distros. (Meaning... I distro-hop.)

So, first of all, let's take the shame out of it: There is no shame in distro hopping. I spend most of my time around computers, and it is important they are fun. HUGE THOUGH, THOUGH, if it becomes a second job, then you do have a problem. As a distro-hop lover, I believe in the idea of a digital backpack, so I can travel anywhere. I wanted to write this post for my own reference, and also for people who kinda get overwhelmed when they setup a new device frequently. I will be updating this post as I change my setup, or when I feel like getting deep into one of the tools :)

Why anyone would need a digital backpack:

  • People who distrohop (obviously)
  • People with multiple computers
  • People who just like to break their computers and start over

What are my goals for my digital backpack:

  • I need to be able to continue what I was doing in the previous setup in less than 30m, even if the new computer is freshly installed. That's it.

What my digital backpack looks like:

The order of the following items are kinda important, since one mostly unlocks the next step.

Bitwarden

First, you need to keep all your secrets in a nice place. You should be doing this anyways, regardless of whether you constantly change systems or not, because having your local env variables in a file is kinda bad. Actually, it is really bad. Don't. Use a password manager. My choice is Bitwarden (rumors has it 1Password also has good features for this purpose).

So, on a new computer, first comes Bitwarden, and there are all my secrets, all keys, whatever you can think of as secret (also SSH keys)

After I get my "keys" into the system, the rest just is easy-peasy-lemon-squashed-into-the-ashes.

Brew

Yeah I am well aware of the problems with Brew, but for uv, glab and gh it might be one of the easiest ways.

GitHub and Gitlab CLIs

I guess it is clear why... These comes from brew.

Chezmoi

Here I use a private GitHub repository, which is why the previous step is neccessary.

Stuff from OS repositories

Here is the area I didn't automate much, and I shouldn't, since all I need from barebones OS is usually just podman.

Mise

Oh I love mise for dev tools. Then you get your Node or Ruby or whatever you need.

Tailscale

My computers and servers should be able to talk to each other, therefore: tailscale. This requires a bit of tinkering, especially around ACLs, so do your research before you create a CATASTROPHE.

Google Chrome Bookmarks

Sync. Done.

Claude and Codex logins :)

No description.

And that is kinda it. I am not sure who else needs this post, but the "me" of a year ago definitely needed it as I was either afraid of breaking my setup or spending way more time than needed when setting up a new one. Also, it is important that your OS is configurable just via text files, that is where Chezmoi or other dotfile managers really shines. For that, you might want to look into dotfile-friendly tools. I am mostly on CachyOS with Niri, but there are many many more alternatives. Talk with your LLM :)

Feel free to reach out if you have any thoughts or questions. Çav.

Email: [email protected]
X: mehmetaderin
LinkedIn: mehmetaderin

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