On my personal machine I keep everything that's not part of a default Ubuntu installation and not a package inside a folder called $HOME/lab. Then I have a shel

On my personal machine I keep everything that's not part of a default Ubuntu installation and not a package inside a folder called $HOME/lab. Then I have a shell script that I run to install packages and create sym links for various config files that live inside this "lab" folder. It makes it so I can switch to a new machine fairly painlessly by copying the folder and running the script. I try to keep changes to the "install script" consistent with changes I make to the system. It's simple and works pretty well.