Say… what is there in #Linux distributions that…
- don’t go in your way too much when you’ve been a veteran #Debian user, admin, developer and project member
- systemd-free (including no UsrMove)
- not busybox-based (so Alpine Linux is out)
- #musl-based is actually a plus in my eyes
- good availability of software (so I can justify using it at $dayjob) for server and dev work
- #X11, not (just) Wayland (this probably means #Xorg these days)
- security support (especially Firefox ESR)
- either stable with security updates and good upgradability or a mild rolling one (that does not require daily updating, perhaps every couple of days; I did run Debian sid as main workstation at work for years)
- allows me to package my own stuff and my own versions of already-included stuff as needed
- has a good focus on quality and integration, not a “we package vanilla upstream code” philosophy
- ofc privacy, no phoning-home by default, patching that out of software too
- some QA wouldn’t go amiss but I’m aware that even reaching a fraction of what Debian’s does is all but impossible for any other #distro (and yes, that includes commercial Debian derivatives as well as unrelated enterprise distros)
So far I’ve been eyeing Slack (great long-term commitment but software availability seems not good) and Void (bit wary about runit as init; while I’ve been using DJB dæmontools to manage individual services, I’d not use it as init) but I have no idea. Bit wary of different packaging tools as well but I’ll probably manage.
#Devuan is not an option: I have full faith in their incapability to deviate in anything from Debian in the long term. And at this point it’s clear that DEB-based distros would need to do a full hard fork from bullseye and never just import any packages from later Debian to thrive, which is unsurmountable.
It should be initramfs-based so I can do a remote FDE cryptsetup unlock with #Dropbear (or full OpenSSH of course) and iproute2 (or busybox ip, but not just klibc ipconfig) over #IPv6. (I hacked that on top of Debian’s successfully.)
I’d need amd64 (on 2007-era Thinkpads, VMs, and server hardware) at first, but armel or armhf/ARMv6 for the occasional RPi I got gifted (I don’t buy from them, what with their surveillance cop and censorship thing) wouldn’t go amiss.