(half replying to other comments as well as yours)

If you have a look at the btrfs mailing lists post that introduced RAID1c34, they were created because RAID56 were not considered viable or fixable. It’s in couched language but reasonably clear. I don’t think you’re thinking of using those (RAID56) but don’t.

Never had any btrfs problems that weren’t self generated or date from a really sticky period in btrfs’s history (years ago, 4.13 or maybe 3.13). I’ve used RAID56 until RAID1c34 became available and RAID10 where I could.

Haven’t tried LUKS - btrfs though, although effectively no worse than putting btrfs in a VM (which is fine if slow at the time), albeit a bit more computationally intensive.

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Doesn’t development still need funding somehow?

“Never meet your heros.” is as old as celebrity itself.

I think many of my heroes live larger in my mind than they could or should ever fulfill; they couldn’t possibly live up to that hype and I wouldn’t want to take it from them through the actuality.

Damn shame.

(Side-glance at you UK BBC.)

Install your own from one of the parent distros: Debian, Fedora/openSUSE, sources (eg. Exherbo, Gentoo), the state-based one I always forget.

An atomic distro is one which is in my understanding, has a basis in libostree, right? I’m familiar with the Fedora/RedHat versions but not any others.

Immutable distributions, for me to are wonderful when they are sparse. I don’t want anything on my OS which I don’t use at least once on a while.

If I install Fedora (RPM) Workstation to a large extent I can remove programs that I don’t want. Whereas SilverBlue (libostree), I’m stuck with whatever the maintainers template (is there a blocking mechanism?).

However, with sparse Fedora-IoT, I can’t break it - to a large extent - and it doesn’t have anything I don’t want.

I always install minimal versions of OSs, from Fedora (Everything iso), to Debian (debootstrap) to ArchLinux to Exherbo to Talos, just keep them cleaner longer. Then I fix them until they break!

I think they’re ideal for those starting out in Linux because they are not ready to break; not saying that they’re not for others too.

There’s enough documentation, at least for Fedora atomic distros, to make your own custom spin.

I’m not switching for any desktop, unless the basic OS is minimal; but have switched for Raspberry Pi OS to Fedora IoT (atomic distro), at least temporarily.

Yes. I’m British.

I live these old stories. Kinda gave up programming by 1996. It was a short-sighted thing to do!

Having grown up with Acorn Atoms. BBC Micro, MS and DRDOS, Gem, Xerox something, Windows 1, don’t remember 2, 3.0 to 3.11, NT. I didn’t realise how nice early (2004) Linux was until I used it in a Windows server hosted VM to handle my phone calls (VoIP@home or something it was called).

I did everything I could to ditch Windows after that. The webification of QuickBooks was the final release.

I agree. I used it to move my vocab on enormously.

It’s actually not that pricey for what you get from it. The problem is that they have a tendency to be closed mouthed about their plans.

I bought a 2.5 GBE router, to replace my elderly and difficult USG, and was about to buy a 2.5 GBE WAP - there was a problem with them having issues with only one chipset inside the first version, so I didn’t pull the trigger immediately. Within a month there was a 10 GBE WAP being sold. A 10 GBE Router appear soon after. Damn.

The only viable alternative, IMHO, is pfsense (mostly US users) and opensense (not US users) and you need your own hardware.

I run my Gateway without a UI login, a local account. I lose some of the features, but that’s ok with me.

Debian Developers are prone to add their own bits with the upstream package. Sometimes it is very useful, sometimes not. They add the relevant systemd units in and turn them on for you and also set up the cron jobs according to which dev prepared the package.

You don’t have to install systemd with Debian (I think?). The row when systemd started to gain traction and DDs debated its inclusion for ages lead to a strange set of decisions, IMHO, about the filesystem layout, which is quite different to what a systemd person would expect, to make it work with the other low level system that is being used.

I thought I saw that sysv stuff is being marked for being removed from the kernel at some stage. Am I imagining that? I don’t know what the alternative init systems are now.

Anyway, Debian is a fine distro.

Suggest you run a desktop with prioritised apt-pinning on Testing and Sid. It makes it semi-rolling and it’s stable as anything. The community makes sure that less than an hour goes past before someone posts a solution to a package error and for that reason I suggest that you always install the apt package scripts which provide the change logs and known bugs with that package before you hit install.

The feedback from the community upstream to the DDs is amazing.

I hope aptitude - an apt TUI - is still being used as that’s one of my favourite ever Debian utilities; a lot of the packages show as hard dependencies when you install them individually but are actually covered by other packages already installed; you can reduce the unused packages in your system by marking the packages auto installed yourself in aptitude very easily. There are several other packages in the repos to do all manner of interesting things. The community spirit is very very strong.

Good luck and have fun.

I found that starting with a debootstrap minimal install from a live distro (I like ArchLinux as a rescue usb, but there are plenty of others on distrowatch.com) and adding a kernel was the best way to go to try to keep the numbers of packages down in my Debian systems. YMMV. My experience was coming up to a decade ago now though, although lots of hardware vendors always love their Debian; UniFi was a Debian fan last time I looked at the controller.

[grin] I get that!

I’m sure that there are others I used to like - I’m an old fart - but this is the only one that occurs to me now.

For some reason, my long term memory stopped in the late nineties. I’m convinced that there are series I’ve watched that I loved that it’s going to take a replay to remember that I loved the incoming theme.

There were several cult shows on BBC2 and ITV back then: Thirty-Something, a few about UK barristers, Moving Story. Damned if I can remember any of the theme tunes.

I started some time ago by reading his Ethereum emissions. I have a relevant qualification but it was handed down last century.

Yeah. I need a refresher. 😳

That’s not to say that the bits which I did understand weren’t elegantly put and digestible.

I do like this man’s musings. This is one I actually understood.

You should go see Gentoo or something if ArchLinux causes you problems.

It’s my go-to rescue cum doing-backups cum new-install distribution because it’s clean (meaning low cruft), minimalist, and most importantly, rolling. I run it as a console OS. I adore it.

Have I run it as my Workstation OS? Yes. Would I again? No. It was too fragile then.

Pacman is too strange to use with the options reduced to letters and having to include the double dash every time you remember the long form. Gimme dnf, Aptitude or flatpak.

My daily driver is Fedora. Is my heart in my mouth every six months when 4,000 packages all need reinstalling? Yes.

Have I tried Debian Testing&Sid as semi-rolling? Yes, fantastic, until they did something weird with systemd instead of just doing the conf locations as intended like everyone else. And the weak-dependencies lists were unfunny. Did I mention I loved aptitude?!

Have I tried, source distros (exherbo, Gentoo, funtoo)? Yes, never got any work done. I was always compiling something for that 1% corner-case performance gain.

Don’t think I’ll try anything else save maybe openSUSE or that NixOS. The first seriously, the second for fun - NixOS smells a tiny bit like Gentoo or ArchLinux to me (sorry, not sorry).

Personally, I think bro needs an immutable Linux OS. Fedora SilverBlue, openSUSE MicroOS, the ArchLinux one.

Then someone needs to write a timer such that when he’s really concentrating hard at 2am, it stops and puts some graphical meme on the screen for three hours. Then he’ll feel at home.

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The Sopranos.

Probably get myself elected somewhere and use my privileges to screw the country for millions in the same way that my elected representatives have been doing since this century started.

Doing a decent job for the country’s citizens seems rather passe these days.