Comment by lucasoshiro

> apt-get/pacman/dnf/brew install <everything that you need>

If only it were so simple. Not every tool comes from a package with the same name, (delta is git-delta, "z" is zoxide, which I'm not sure I'd remember off the top of my head when installing on a new system). On top of that, you might not like the defaults of every tool, so you'll have config files that you need to copy over or recreate (and hopefully sync between the computers where you use these tools).

That said I do think nix provides some good solutions for this. It gives you a nice clean way to list the packages you want in a nixfile and also to set their defaults and/or provide some configuration files. It does still require some maintenance (and I choose to install the config files as editable, which is not very nix-y, but I'd rather edit it and then commit the changes to my configs repo for future deploys than to have to edit and redeploy for every minor or exploratory change), but I've found it's much better than trying maintain some sort of `apt-get install [packages]` script.

Stronhly agreed. I don't understand why I'd want to make >99% of my time doing things less convenient in offer to try to make my usage in the <1% of the time I'm on a machine where I can't install things even in a local directory for the user I'm ssh'd into feel less bad by comparison. It's not even a tradeoff where I'm choosing which part of the curve to optimize for; it's literally flattening the high part to make the lower overall convenience level constant.

> You'll need install those and other tools (your favorite browser, you favorite text editor, etc) anyway if you're changing your OS.

The point is that sometimes you're SSHing to a lightweight headless server or something and you can't (or can't easily) install software.

> When you connect through SSH you don't have GUI and that's not a reason for avoiding using GUI tools, for example.

One major difference can emerge from the fact that using a tool regularly inevitably builds muscle memory.

You’re accustomed to a replacement command-line tool? Then your muscle memory will punish you hard when you’re logged into an SSH session on another machine because you’re going to try running your replacement tool eventually.

You’re used to a GUI tool? Will likely bite you much less in that scenario.