wonderful to read, the next generation should be open minded and know about Linux and FOSS.
If he knows python introduce him to SciPy https://www.scipy.org/ that is the core Library for Data Science, he will probably need to do high school and unuversity to understand the math but it would not hurt to be aware of data science as a field of study (data science is ML/AI/NPL/BigData) and https://d3js.org/ great way to represent data vizualization, it might even look cool for himn to play with it.
My Sister’s newbie who is 7 years old, his writing is beginner level and math, but knows how to power up his Linux, check for updates, open store install a game and play it (loves playing supertuxkart), he uses ubuntu mate simple to manage, but for a 7 year old I am happy and proud uncle, we have removed www surfing, browsers and internet in general, but when he gets 10-12 he will no doubt know to do it.
I know this thread is from two years ago, but if anyone is still interested in managing their dotfiles, I wrote two in depth articles about my entire setup. I use it regularly to keep 6 different computers with 5 different Linux distribution’s configuration files in sync with each other. Thanks to this collection of tools, I have:
vim working the same on every single computer that I touch
standardized on one terminal emulator, ROXterm, whose config files I sync with this method so that it looks the same on all of my desktops
aliases in my .bashrc that are the same across all Linux OS’s but use the standard tools for that distribution, like their specific package managers.
I have skimmed through part of your first blog and you said there was issue adopting your workflow to chezmoi but for me it was relatively easy.
I was able to change the chezmoi merge tool to neovim and include only local and target states instead of the default 3.
@sradjoker, I’m thrilled that chezmoi has worked great for you. I still believe it is an amazing tool to manage your config files, and has some power that yadm lacks. I never dived super deep into chezmoi to see if I could create a workflow with chezmoi that would overcome my desire to edit config files with whatever text editor was handy at the time. Most of the time I edit my config files with vim but sometimes I use a GUI text editor like Featherpad. From my initial review of chezmoi as a tool, I would have to remember to run the chezmoi command before editing a config file.
It appears that you have perhaps overcome that step by bringing chezmoi into your perferred editor of neovim. Perhaps you have written a wrapper lua script to do all of the right things when you go to edit a config file so that chezmoi is able to track when you have made changes to configs and automatically syncs them for you.
I’m not a programmer at all, so I wouldn’t even know how to do that in neovim or using vim script in vim. Also being rather unfamiliar with how chezmoi does all of its tricks to keep track of config files, I’m not totally sure what you meant when you wrote the following, but it sounds super cool.
I revived this thread just to give the members of this community one picture of how they could manage their dotfiles for multiple Linux distributions using one of the tools available in the FOSS world, which I outline more in the 2nd article. I still believe that @rwaltr wrote a great tutorial and offers a number of compelling reasons for chezmoi and it sounds like it is the right tool for you too.
I think for me, I’ve created a workflow and toolset that I love using everyday with yadm, a 1st gen. Pi, and Wireguard vpn to connect my two networks at home and work. I can also see a huge advantage to your idea of integrating chezmoi with your preferred editor neovim.
Thanks for mentioning your success with chezmoi because it deserves accolades, and I hope that reviving this thread encourages others in this community to try one of the many tools out there to keep their dotfiles and config files in sync between their Linux systems.
I realize this is not helpful… but I don’t, for the most part. I manually move them over when I see necessary or I create little exports in Plasma to make my settings the same across hardware. I sync those configs using Syncthing but only to implement as needed.