Some distros allow this. Nix for example allows you to save config files that describe your entire system (apps, settings, etc) and then load them in one go. Other distros are following suit with their own tailored solutions too (I think Ubuntu might have something? Manjaro?).

I did more than 5 installs this weekend (for … reasons) and the “trick” IMHO is …

Do NOT install things ahead of actually needing them. (of course this assume things take minutes to install and thus you will have connectivity)

For me it meant Firefox was top of the list, VLC or Steam (thus NVIDIA driver) second, vim as I had to edit crontab, etc.

Quite a few are important to me but NOT urgent, e.g Cura (for 3D printer) and OpenSCAD (for parametric design) or Blender. So I didn’t event install them yet.

So IMHO as other suggested docker/docker-compose but only for backend.

Now… if you really want a reproducible desktop install : NixOS. You declare your setup rather than apt install -y and “hope” it will work out. Honestly I was tempted but as install a fresh Debian takes me 1h and I do it maybe once a year, at most, no need for me (yet).

Using ansible will help you on your 2nd, 3rd , nth install.

But getting ansible to do what you want (plus testing) for the first time would takes 10x longer than manual install.

I think there’s xkcd about that.

You could write yourself a bash script to do this.

I have a bash script I use to script my Silverblue install. Something like this should work.

# space-separated list of packages to install
S_RPM_PACKAGES_TO_INSTALL="pkg1 pkg2 pkg3"

# function to install the packages
dnf_install () {
	sudo dnf install -y $1
}

# call to function, passing the list
dnf_install "$S_RPM_PACKAGES_TO_INSTALL"

I have it set up this way so that I just have a bunch of bash variables describing the stuff I want to install all at the top of the file, but the function definitions and calls lower down since I don’t need to see them.

It also does other things like removes packages from the system, removes some preinstalled flatpaks, installs flatpaks from Fedora Flatpaks / Flathub / gnome-nightly, and sets up gnome through a list gsettings commands.

As I use my system, I add new apps to the list I want next time I install and remove apps I don’t use.

I do use docker, and compose a lot. But can it be used for desktop apps? Telegram, gimp, Thunderbird, etc?

Something like Ansible won’t help you the first time around, but it’ll make the next times easier.

Docker, docker and docker compose

Probably would be better to move to full kubernetes but it does have a strong learning curve

Have you tried SaveDesktop? Thought It is limited in the flatpak softwares, but cloud synchronization feature is recently added.

I use yadm’s post-checkout script feature to accomplish this on my machines.

I use an Ansible playbook to do fresh install stuff such as app installs & joining my local Samba AD.

Another option, that I’ve never tried, would be to put your /home directory on another partition. That only solves the settings though and not your app installation bit.