opi VS nixos-config

This is incorrect. It also installs a set list of packages.

Have you looked into OPI? This allows you to easily search and install community packages from the Open Build System similarly to how it is with working with yay on Arch. It very likely does not contain things like git packages or fonts but it can be pretty useful for packages like ckb-next and since it pulls from the OBS it is always guaranteed to be a binary, no compilation necessary

As of this writing, opi performs the following operations behind the curtains (see here for reference):

opi will implement a workaround in https://github.com/openSUSE/opi/pull/120 which will force the ffmpeg version on tumbleweed to be >=5.

OPI is your friend. You don't have to update every day...once a week or so is fine. Set up multiversion for kernels. A lot of times if a vendor offers a Fedora RPM and not openSUSE, the Fedora RPM will work fine. If you are using Nvidia, wait to update kernels... that's all I can think of. Use and update the wiki as needed, it's a good resource, but can get outdated.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's using Packman https://github.com/openSUSE/opi

For more information https://github.com/openSUSE/opi

OPI is also useful for finding other packages that aren't in the regular repos

The easiest way to install software is with OPI, you can also search with Zypper or YaST. Generally, if you can find an RPM file built for Fedora, you can install it on Tumbleweed as well - I'm sure there are exceptions.

I use Nix/NixOS. My system state is a direct result of my config that is declared in a bunch of text files. For example, leaf packages that are installed system-wide are declared here: https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/e646c4ec1aac80cfdf7b8c79debcfaee70237018/packages.nix

If it matters, my distro is NixOS and here's the machine's system config: https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/95f9bb201ab4c2ab95fb3089909f5951a0646699/configs/HEPHAISTOS/default.nix

If something really goes south, I can have my entire system rebuilt automatically almost to the bit within 5-20min (mostly dependant on Internet speed) because my system is reproducible from just a bunch of text files.

Here's my desktop configuration to give you an idea: https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/0e97d9af632852e7440563a9b5976663e61071b7/desktop.nix

If you want to know more: https://nixos.org/ Here's how such a system declaration can look like: My current desktop configuration, packages "installed" system-wide.

If you're looking for a way to restore your system configuration should your drive go kaput, perhaps look into declarative means of configuration instead. With those, your system is defined by a few text files and restoring or duplicating it is trivial. If you want to stay with Arch (great distro), imperative tools like Ansible, Puppet or Chef should work. If you want to try greener pastures, look into NixOS which is what I use. All I need to restore my machine is a few text files like this one (I just clone the git repo).

It only takes https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/master/configs/HEPHAISTOS/default.nix#L14 and all these settings are applied: https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/af0960a7f7b0d6b9d775015c63a107ede6f63c82/desktop.nix

Here's the list of packages available in all my systems or my desktop configuration to give you an idea.

Set it up once precisely the way you like it, run forever. You only need slight tweaks every now and then to keep up with progress. On how many machines you want with as much shared configuration you want, any time you want. If your NixOS boot drive died, you could have a working NixOS system that's exactly[3] like the old one in a matter of minutes depending on your internet and hardware speed. (Without user data of course.) All you need is one (or a few if you prefer) lean text files that can and should be tracked in a git repo like this on: https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config