mirabilos<p>Say… what <em>is</em> there in <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/linux" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Linux</span></a> distributions that…</p><ul><li>don’t go in your way too much when you’ve been a veteran <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/debian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Debian</span></a> user, admin, developer and project member</li><li>systemd-free (including no UsrMove)</li><li>not busybox-based (so Alpine Linux is out)</li><li><a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/musl" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>musl</span></a>-based is actually a plus in my eyes</li><li>good availability of software (so I can justify using it at $dayjob) for server and dev work</li><li><a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/x11" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>X11</span></a>, not (just) Wayland (this probably means <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/xorg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Xorg</span></a> these days)</li><li>security support (especially Firefox ESR)</li><li>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)</li><li>allows me to package my own stuff and my own versions of already-included stuff as needed</li><li>has a good focus on quality and integration, not a "we package vanilla upstream code" philosophy</li><li>ofc privacy, no phoning-home by default, patching that out of software too</li><li>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 <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/distro" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>distro</span></a> (and yes, that includes commercial Debian derivatives as well as unrelated enterprise distros)</li></ul><p>So far I’ve been eyeing Slackware (great ling-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.</p><p><a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/devuan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Devuan</span></a> 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.</p><p>It should be initramfs-based so I can do a remote FDE cryptsetup unlock with <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/dropbear" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Dropbear</span></a> (or full OpenSSH of course) and iproute2 (or busybox ip, but not just klibc ipconfig) over <a href="https://toot.mirbsd.org/tags/ipv6" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>IPv6</span></a>. (I hacked that on top of Debian’s successfully.)</p><p>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.</p>