throwawayish

Off-topic, but how long have you been using Manjaro? I am genuinely interested, btw*.

Notably openSUSE Tumbleweed is a distro that satisfies all requirements while not being named yet by others. Apart from it, only Arch and Fedora are worth mentioning as distros that also satisfy all requirements (as some others have already noted).

Thank you so much! Much appreciated!

Something that hasn't quite been touched upon but might be important to note is that both Zorin and Linux Mint run 'old' kernels (almost two years old in fact). While this does not necessarily have to affect you, there's a considerable chance that you might not reap the benefit from improved performance and other good stuff that would be found on a newer kernel.

Generally speaking, you should be fine regardless. However, if you intend to primarily engage in high-fidelity gaming, then I'd argue it's at least worth benchmarking your performances on Zorin and/or Linux Mint and compare that to a Fedora(-based distro; like Bazzite or Nobara) or an openSUSE Tumbleweed (or perhaps even an Arch(-based distro) if you're feeling brave). If the differences are negligible, then you shouldn't let this be a factor to take into consideration. But if it isn't, then you might want to (at least) consider switching over to a distro with a newer kernel (eventually).

Finally, the 'old' kernel is -in a sense- one of the reasons why both Zorin and Linux Mint are even popularized for newer users. But, that's something I won't be able to go over in this comment for the sake of brevity.

So they've had a major release last year in December. And their official website seems to be up. Though, I only had luck connecting to it through Tor 😅. It's still active according to Distrowatch. And, honestly, the reader reviews ain't that bad. I'd say give it a spin and consider reporting back on us 🙂.

Thanks for enlightening us! Fortunately, the answer in my original comment should still satisfy your needs.

On the software-side of things; Kodi is cool. As for remote control, consider referring to Kodi's Wiki-page on the matter for options.

Btw, honestly your query is way too vague. If possible, please provide us with more info so that we can better help you 😉.

About Ansible, it’s not declarative in the same way Nix is. The way it actually works is it executes little Python programs based on your config. But if you stick to the high level modules, it has a declarative feel.

Would it be correct to compare this to how declarative post-installation scripts written in bash feel like? Or is it really declarative, but just not to the level of Nix?

Btw, I just want to thank you for the heads-up 🙂 !

I use it to orchestrate Docker containers for my infrastructure and then some.

Very interesting. I will definitely look into this! Much appreciated!

Are you managing dotfiles in rootless containers?

There's not a lot to it, but I like to have my stuff related to .zshrc and .vimrc around regardless of what environment I'm in.

IMO you shouldn’t install nix in a container. If you want to customize your container, run nix outside of the container and tell home manager to apply itself to the container’s file system (home-manager build will put the result into a result directory, which you can copy). Or, you could just mount your host ~/.config on the container maybe.

Very informative! Much appreciated!

Ansible is a big project, but at the end of the day it’s just a Python package. If you already have Python installed, it’s not really adding that much.

Perhaps I should look more into this. Thanks for enlightening me on this matter!

Also obligatory advice for anyone new to Nix: use flakes. Flakes are good and right. It sucks that Nix is in a confusing transition process to flakes, but if you just adopt them completely from the start it makes everything easier. Your home manager config can live in a single flake somewhere that you find convenient, and you can apply it from there.

Noted.

This has definitely opened up both Home Manager and Ansible as potential solutions. Perhaps somewhat random, but have you by any chance engaged with Guix' guix home?

Thanks a lot for your input; much appreciated!

Let me know if you have other questions.

• Is it possible to use Nix' Home Manager to manage dotfiles within a container in such a way that changes applied to said dotfiles within the container would be 'synced' with all the other configs for existing (and future) containers?

• Is it possible to continue to have said functionality if the host doesn't have Nix' Home Manager setup/installed? (So, like, can Nix and its Home Manager be installed within a (rootless) container?)

• Are you by any chance knowledgeable on how Guix' guix home relates to Nix` Home Manager and how either of the two might be more suitable in this situation and why?

Aight. Thanks, regardless 🙂 !