No issues with Debian / Ubuntu on many laptops since early 2010s, mostly with Intel graphics. I had a Vostro 1400 with Nvidia and it also resumed fine, but that was 2009-11 so the experience with the Nvidia driver from that time is likely irrelevant.

You can do encrypted swap as well. If you use the same passphrase you can install decrypt_keyctl and use it as described here. It will cache the passphrase and send it to every other LUKS volume that needs decrypting so you have to type it only once. This is what I’m currently using and my root is on ZFS on LUKS.

Another option which I haven’t used is to have a small volume that only stores your LUKS keys as files, then your LUKS volumes reference those files as keys, then you decrypt only that volume with a passphrase upon boot.

Another option is to use a swap file. I used to run Ubuntu LTS on LUKS on LVM. That is disk > EFI and LVM partitions > LVM volume boot, LVM volume for LUKS > root filesystem inside LUKS > swapfile in that root filesystem. Upon boot, GRUB is able to read the Linux kernel straight from the boot volume on LVM. Boots the kernel. You get a prompt to decrypt the LUKS volume where the root filesystem is. Once decrypted, the kernel can access the swapfile if it needs to resume from it. If I didn’t use ZFS, I’d be using this scheme as it’s superbly flexible. Growing the volumes and filesystems for larger storage is easy. Adding redundancy via LVMRAID is easy. Changing the swap size is easy. Hibernation works.

Talking to my structural engineer friend about the way we build software makes him sad every time. And I’m not even talking about vibe coding. Yet.

Yup. It’s completely inconsistent in its interpretation of the + operator.

This is too stupid so I had to check.

Fuck me.

It’s more than a packaging format but yes. It includes all dependencies needed to run the main program in a container but the kernel. It’s a complete separate root filesystem. When you run it, as intended, a single process is started which loads all the things it needs from that filesystem. It’s isolated from the rest of the system unless you share resources with it, like directories or special devices. Obviously this results in larger packages but there is a clever way to save on that overhead with layering, so in practice while still significantly larger than single program deb files, it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. The thing is that Flatpak and Snap also package dependencies to a different degree.

No I use Debian. For anything that’s somehow not packaged for it, there’s Docker.

I see. Thanks!

What’s Hyprland?

Thunderbird. The “Mozilla problem” is greatly exaggerated and even if so, there are forks.

The most reliable Linux OS out there, software and community. If there’s still people and computers in 50 years, Debian will still be around.

I was wondering when piracy is going to join the game. Awkwardly absent so far.

Yes

Yeah, that’s all there’s to it, along with pure ignorance. In a past not so ideologically developed life, I’ve written code under Apache 2 because it was “more free.” Understanding licenses, their implications, the ideologies behind them and their socioeconomic effects isn’t trivial. People certainly aren’t born educated in those, and often they reach for the code editor before that.

A bit more useful, puts the different parent distros to scale:

High-res source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions?wprov=sfla1

On desktop, yeah. Unity > GNOME, upstart > systems, snap. I don’t fuck with snap, I just use it as intended, I don’t try to remove it. I think I started actively using it in 2016. As a software developer I understand that only the happy path is reasonably tested so I try not to go too far out of it. 😂

I typically wait for the LTS point release before upgrading. I check the release notes. I check if anything is broken after the upgrade, fix as needed. I’m sure I’ve done some stuff when the migration to GNOME happened. But that’s to be expected when a major component change occurs. If you had some non-default config or workflow, it might require rework. E.g. some custom PulseAudio config broke on my laptop with the migration to Pipewire in 24.04. But on that legendary desktop install, the only unexpected breakage was during an upgrade when the power went out. Luckily upgrades are just apt operations so I was able to recover and finish the upgrade manually.

I think a friend is running a 2012 or 2010 install. 🥲

And I’ve also swapped multiple hardware platforms on this install. 😂 Went AMD > Intel > AMD > more AMD. Swapped SSDs, went single to mirror, increased in size.

I mean… once you kick the Windows-brain reinstall habit and you learn enough, the automatic instinct upon something unexpected becomes to investigate and fix it. Reinstall is just so much more laborious on a customized machine.

Interesting. We use it for work since 2016 (high hundreds of workstations) and I’ve used it since 2005 on variety of machines and use cases without significant issues. We’ve also used it to operate a couple of datacenters (OpenStack private clouds) with good results. That said I’ve been using LTS exclusively since 2014 and don’t use PPAs since 2018-20 and it’s been solid. My main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since the initial install in 2014.

Debian stable. It’s been here for 30 years, it’s the largest community OS, it’ll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves). Any derivative is subject to higher probability of additional issues, stoppage of development in the long run, etc.

If you’re extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade. Ubuntu is the least risky alternative for boring operation since it’s used in the enterprise and Canonical is profitable. The risk there is Canonical doing an IPO and Ubuntu going the way of tightening access like Red Hat did.

The machine that was last installed in 2014 is Ubuntu LTS. It’s been upgraded through all the LTS releases since then. Currently on 22.04 with the free Ubuntu Pro enabled. I use a mix of Ubuntu LTS and Debian stable on other machines. For example my laptop is on Debian 12. Debian has been the most reliable OS and community for over 30 years and I believe it’ll still be around 30 years from now, if we haven’t destroyed ourselves. 😂

Yeah, it seems counterproductive to ditch FOSS in the name of self-sufficiency. If it were about that, assembling an army of software people to learn and contribute to important FOSS codebases would be much more productive in my opinion. It feels like Harmony Next is about something else. Perhaps some wholesale insurance. Or someone’s plans grandeur.