I’dv deleted the default, it’s never come back.

Except Alpine & those based on it, which uses Linux but not GNU libc or GNU coreutils or GNU BASH… Just musl libc & Busybox. I.e. the entire subject of this thread is one of the non-GNU Linuxes.

Yes, I listed sysvinit for that reason. And Musl instead of glibc. GNU is optional in a Linux distro, except for the kernel’s use of a GNU license.

Sure, I should have gone further.

Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/GNU BASH/Linux/X11//GTK/GNOME
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/GNU BASH/Linux/X11/GTK/LXDE
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/X11/GTK/GNOME
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/X11/GTK/LXDE
SysVInit/musl/Busybox/tcsh/Linux/csh
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/Wayland/QT/KDE Plasma
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/Wayland/QT/LXQT

etc, etc.

There are thousands of combinations of the possible layers needed to make an OS.

Systemd/GNU/Linux/GTK or Systemd/GNU/Linux/QT, really…

Swap files are useful if you are still on EXT4 or similar. If you’re using ZFS or BTRFS or BCacheFS, they have no benefits.

Used it for the last few years. X just doesn’t work right with multiple monitors of different resolution.

You wouldn’t end up at a login screen, you’d end up in the last logged in user’s session.

Motorola Razr IIRC. First smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S.

People use computers to accplish tasks. That requires running software on an OS, but nobody runs software or an OS just to sit & watch it exist. They run it to accomplish tasks.

Different distros mostly vary in how easy it is to accomplish various tasks. No one distro is the easiest for everything, so people make different choices depending on their needs.

I’m the same way. I’m happy with my life, overall, but of course there are improvements I could make. There is pleasure in achieving something long striven for, and there is displeasure in the striving. More money would achieve some of the things I want more quickly, but none are critical so the balance is better with a longer wait and lower stress.

Murphy’s Oil Soap for wood floors.

I use NixOS & Home Manager. My config is in git, and I use an ephemeral setup with ZFS & tmpfs:

Mount layout:

/		 tmpfs  
├─/boot /dev/sda1  FAT32 EFI system partition
├─/nix	 rpool/local/nix ZFS partition
├─/home/persist rpool/safe/home ZFS partition
└─/persist	 rpool/safe/persist ZFS partition

ZFS partitions under rpool/safe/ get backed up, the rest don’t need to be. Everything else can be rebuilt (and most of it gets re-created at boot anyway, since / and /home are tmpfs).

Same. I’d rather pay than have advertising.

Yep, it’s basically a way to define new groups per directory. But these groups are hidden from the normal group commands!

Hah! Lots of (shitty) sites don’t allow some “special” characters, like '. That’s usually a sign that they’re storing passwords insecurely, and it’s always a sign that they’re not following current security best practices (composition rules reduce security).

I deliberately run / and /home as tmpfs. Then everything I want to persist across boots gets symlinked in at system start, and anything I didn’t opt in to saving gets deleted every boot.

EFI systems don’t use the MBR. Windows will default to using the whole disk if you don’t use the “advanced” button, but so will most linux distro installers.

Not with EFI boot. If you deliberately use legacy BIOS emulation to boot, it can. So don’t do that.

With EFI systems this doesn’t matter. It was an issue with the legacy BIOS bootloader systems about a decade ago though.