Have same installation and settings/software on notebook and PC

Hi,
i am a new casual user of linux (manjaro) and want to use it much more now for software developing.
I run XFCE manjaro right now on my PC (beside windows) and on my MacBook Pro. Everything works fine at the moment out of the box. Now i want to add some stuff and some configuration, but i do not want to do it twice.
Is it possible to configure one device, like my PC, and add all the software i need and somehow move this settings/configuration/software to my MacBook easily?

Best regards,
Moritz.

Try Time-shift on separate HDD. Backup from one Device and restore to another.

Keep in mind that is advisable to do this if your machines are running the same os or same based oss.

I use a script to install software, not only to use it on multiple computers, but also when I reinstall (which I do sometimes for various reasons). After installation, I plug in an external drive and run a script, then make whatever tweaks the script is not able to do.

That is one good way of doing it.

I made Transfuse for this on KDE
Never did test or get reports from other DEs so its never been expanded like that.
But it does have DE-agnostic options like creating pkglists and installing from them:

I don’t use KDE a lot personally but id like to get feedback on youre expieriance on that script.

Dont know what to say - it worked last time I tested it :blush:

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I just switched from Gnome to KDE and have not yet taken the time to figure out how to export/import Plasma settings, so I will definitely give your script a look!

There is no such thing as synchronizing your operating system across multiple physical machines yet. (At least not to my knowledge)
(Who knows maybe in future mankind will use the cloud to boot from to accomplish this)

What you could do in mean time is:

  1. Make sure you install the software on both machines, when you install software.
  2. Export your home-directory on your PC via NFS and mount it via NFS on your MacBook.
    That way all your settings are always in sync because you use the same physical home-directory. :wink:
    This is the unix way used in enterprises since a long time. (Ok maybe some use different share protocols but still)

I googled a bit and found those examples using this script from pacman:
Source PC:
pacman -Qqen > pkglist.txt
pacman -Qqem > pkglist_aur.txt

Destination:
sudo su
for x in $(cat pkglist-repo.txt); do pacman -S --needed $x; done
yaourt -S --needed --noconfirm $(< pkglist-aur.txt)

I will try it with 2 VMs first, with copying the user folder too and see what happens.

But thanks so far.

If this does not work, i will try a combination of Timeshift and BackInTime

This will not work because of these inconsistencies… :wink:

Plus the fact that you will be trying to (re-)install all packes from $(< pkglist-aur.txt) unconditionally, without the list you just checked…

Also dont use yaourt and you should make sure to update before installing packages.

For what its worth, heres what transfuse does:

#create lists
pacman -Qqen > ./"$HOSTNAME"_"$NOW"_native.txt
pacman -Qqem > ./"$HOSTNAME"_"$NOW"_alien.txt

#install regular pkglist
sudo pacman -S --needed - < "$HOSTNAME"_"$NOW"_native.txt

# then to install the AUR packages
# there is a number of aur helpers .. but yay or pamac would be one of the following:
pamac build $(cat "$HOSTNAME"_"$NOW"_alien.txt" | tr '\n' ' ')
yay -Sa --needed - < "$HOSTNAME"_"$NOW"_alien.txt"

Will try this one. Thanks.