That was a bit off piste wasn’t it!

Ah, I have internet that can reach alllll around the world 😁

I wouldn’t say arch and arch-based are the same thing. If someone specifically asks about arch, I’d be inclined to advise them it’s not suitable for people not interested in reading and learning a bit. But I also agree arch-based are pretty solid and much more beginner friendly.

there is around 193 countries in the world. i dont think every single one will make it s legal requirement. I think we should be ok at least for a few decades anyway.

Nah computing as a service will be for the masses and mainstream user who doesn’t care, and they will have age verification and all the “security” measures included. The custom build and DIY setups won’t change at all. Any Linux / BSD distro can just be hosted in a territory that doesn’t require these “security” measures, then anybody who knows how to use them will be able to continue unaffected.

Backups and backups and backups, and then and only then can you trust your data is safe. I run all consumer disks, have 2x2tb ssd’s in a raid1 for user facing storage which are always powered up and mounted. I only have 2 users in total, so relatively light load. Then I have 2x8tb hdd’s which only power on once a day at most, for as long as it takes rsync to complete it’s nightly backups, then they dismount and power off. Been running this for 18 months and not had any issues. My hdd’s will last years with their current load and usage, with only probably a few hundred mb written every night. But if your data is managed and backed up sensibly, and you use raid effectively, cheap discs aren’t a worry.