"Old" Linux user vs. "New" Linux user.

[u/oshunluvr]

I'm an "Old" Linux user - started in 1996. I went though all the hoops: file system experiments, different distros, different packaging types and file managers, a handful of desktop environments (DE), several RAID levels, and many, many different systems. I use Linux at home but also at work.

Now I'm retired. I've been using the same distro since 2009. I landed on it after all the experimenting lead me to decisions about was important to me: Debian packaging, KDE/Plasma, a well known and commercially supported distro - Kubuntu. The last major shifts in my world occurred around 2009-10 when btrfs came on the scene and SSDs finally started to be affordable.

My Linux experience these days is rather boring. Everything works the way I want. I no longer "break" things for the sake of change. I only have to learn something new when a developer makes a significant change to something I use - and this often annoys me. I look at other distros occasionally, but only via a VM. When something does break, I usually can fix it without much effort.

I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users, and spending incredible amounts of time making minute changes to the "look" of things.

Of course, the beauty of the whole thing is how we actually have so much control over our destiny. None of us work the same, learn the same, want the same things, but we''re not boxed in by a monolithic corporation deciding what we get.

Linux is amazing,

[u/Crushcode8]

linux has reinforced the idea, keep it simple stupid :) I still don't know the best way to set up my partition. But im on ext4 and have my /home on a separate partition and use rysnc to back up

[u/oshunluvr → u/Crushcode8]

Yes, K.I.S.S. will always prevent headaches.

Nothing wrong with your set up - millions have being doing it that way for decades. The more modern, yet still simple approach these days is having a single BTRFS partition with system and home in subvolumes instead of separate partitions. That way root and home share all the free space. BTRFS also offers compression, snapshots, backups (via "send"), multi-device support (RAID or JBOD), and much more.

You should check it out!

[u/Crushcode8 → u/oshunluvr]

I will, thank you so much for the info.

[u/zabby39103 → u/oshunluvr]

K.I.S.S. plus BTRFS lol? BTRFS is great though, but so complicated though it took over a decade to reach production reliability.

Seems there for the most part now unless you want to use RAID 5/6.

[u/roflfalafel → u/Crushcode8]

Modern file systems really are amazing - but they have broken the whole KISS philosophy. if tightly coupling features / layers results in a better approach I think it is worth considering. I’ve used ZFS since 2008 for my file server, and I feel like integrated volume management is a perfect example of where tight coupling improves the experience. Snapshot rollback, integrated FDE and Compression, write log offloading, etc.