What does this all do?

From a "fresh" install of Ubuntu Server/Ubuntu MATE 20.04, this will let me set up my box the way I want to.

How to use

You'll want to install one of the two distros above, and then run:

git clone https://github.com/jws85/Dotfiles
~/Dotfiles/provision LEVEL

LEVEL can be (the below refer to Ansible roles):

• server: base , kvm, and docker
• build: base and build
• min-desktop: base, desktop, and gnome
• dev-desktop: Everything in min-desktop + build + docker + emacs + mpd
• full-desktop: Everything in dev-desktop + games + kvm

On subsequent runs, LEVEL can be omitted.

What does this ultimately install?

The Ansible playbook names are self-explanatory.

If you install one of the desktop playbooks, it'll set up i3 and friends.

Because this is all implemented as one big Ansible setup, there is a hard requirement for Ansible, though I really need to investigate using its capability to install stuff remotely...

Why did you switch away from Pop_OS/GNOME?

I installed Pop_OS sometime in 2020 at a point where I was happily hacking away on a reasonably recent laptop (an X260).

A little prior to Christmas 2020, my X260 started experiencing GPU failures, and all I had on hand at the time was... a Raspberry Pi 4. Pop_OS isn't even intended for non-x86_64 architectures. I ended up flashing an Ubuntu Server image and plopping my old i3 configs in place.

Moreover... I am increasingly interested in computer environments that are

1. simple and clean
2. performant
3. can run on low-power boxen like a Raspberry Pi

i3 fits this all a lot better! However, I've historically done a lot of desktop environment jumping, and I'm sure it'll happen again... I hope not...

Why not some simpler bash script instead of Ansible?

I found a guide that used Ansible, and honestly I wanted to learn a system automation tool at some point.

Ansible generally works well, but I have run into glitches sometimes as can be expected by a tool that essentially has to do 'everything.' It's also pretty heavy -- a big Python app. Right now I'm installing it inside of a pipx virtualenv, so at least it's not totally infecting my installs!

I briefly looked into replacing Ansible with Makefiles or with bash scripts and realized that I was losing out on a lot of functionality and work that was "already done for me."

What remains untested?

It's my personal config, expect everything to be always broken.