Chezmoi for Distro-Hoppers

A practical, start-to-finish guide to keeping your personal Linux setup reproducible. If you enjoy trying Linux distributions, reinstalling a system, or maintaining more than one machine, you eventually meet the same chore: rebuilding the small choices that make a computer feel like yours. Shell settings, terminal profiles, launcher preferences, text-expansion snippets, and application configuration all live in scattered files—usually “dotfiles”—inside your home directory. chezmoi is a tool for recording the configuration you deliberately want to keep, storing it in a Git repository, and applying it back to a new machine. It does not back up an entire home directory or install every application for you. It is a focused, reviewable way to restore your configuration. Start small. A good first repository might contain .bashrc, a terminal profile, and a few application settings. Add more only after you understand what each file contains. The mental modelchezmoi keeps a source state: the…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town