Ansible

Ansible is a configuration manager.

It lets you manage anything from dotfiles to system packages.

NixOS does the same thing, but NixOS not only sets up the system, but a change in the config file will also reflect in the state of the system, unlike Ansible which only does the initial setup.

Ansible has YAML playbooks, and a .cfg config file.

• Control Node: A system where ansible is installed
• Inventory: Configurations for a system

• Managed Node: A system which is controlled by Ansible

• Inventories (INI/YAML) - specifies the hosts

• Playbooks (YAML) - specifies the jobs (plays) and tasks.
• Modules
• Plugins
• Collections (Contains playbooks, modules, plugins and roles. Can be installed from Ansible Galaxy)

Also Nix only works on Linux/macOS, not on Windows.