YMMV… but in my experience that whole “time to maintain arch”-idea is overstated.

I defintiely spend less time on issues like “oh, there’s a bug. let’s role that update back and try again in 6-24 hours when it’s fixed” or “defaults changed in a new version, let’s take a quick look at the changes” on arch than on annoying bugs persisting for years in fixed distros. And that’s before calculating the whole “distro upgrade every otehr year”-stuff. Which likes to kill a whole weekend at least and barely ever works (followed by the same “oh, defaults changed” but now on dozens of components at the same time).

And because of that second point in particular even if archlinux wouldn’t be my choice I could never go back to a non-rolling release.

Sounds like every perfectly normal load-bearing wall I have ever seen…

Missing the updated Logo:

This would -at least as far as I understand it- limit your swap’s functionality for hibernation etc. Because there your swap needs to be available early. You can still do it in theory, but the key file then would need to be included in you initrams, which kind of defeats the purpose.

There is however a much more easier option: either use LVM on luks (so the volume is decrypted with the password and then contains both, root and swap) or just use the same password for root and swap while switching over to the systemd hooks (as those encryption hooks try unlokcing everything with the first provided password by default, and only ask for additional password if this fails).

Hydrogen or battery?

The answer is battery. If battery is an option then the answer is battery. Always.

This will only change if either there is an unlimited amount of free energy available or the laws of thermodynamics stop being valid.

with Apple dominating Europe…

Your own map diagrees, with 100% of the picked examples from Europe having Samsung as market leader.

Stick to a specific distro and train your staff

Linux is Linux. Train your staff to properly use one and they can use them all. “Distro” is just a fancy word for “which package manager and update cycle to we chose and what logo do we put on our pre-installed wallpaper”.

Yes, I actually just use Wine with a default prefix and pray it works. If it doesn’t (rarely) then the game gets his own prefix to tweak the settings.

you didn’t say what file system your /boot partition was using, so I don’t want to guess

It’s actually easy to guess. There is exactly one filesystem UEFI has to support by its specification, everything else is optional… so unless you produce for Apple -because they demand apfs support for their hardware- no vendor actually cares to implement anything but FAT.

When you say system drive this will also have your efi system partition (usually FAT-formated as that’s the only standard all UEFI implementations support), maybe also a swap partition (if not using a swap file instead) etc… so it’s not just copiying the btrfs partition your system sits on.

Yes clonezilla will keep the same UUID when cloning (and I assume your fstab properly uses UUIDs to identify drivees). In fact clonezilla uses different tools depending on filesystem and data… on the lowest level (so for example on unlocked encrypted data it can’t handle otherwise) clonezilla is really just using dd to clone everything. So cloning your disk with clonezilla, then later expanding the btrfs partition to use up the free space works is an option

But on the other hand just creating a few new partitions, then copying all data might be faster. And editing /etc/fstab with the new UUIDs while keeping everything else is no rocket science either.

The best thing: Just pick a method and do it. It’s not like you can screw up it up as long if your are not stupid and accidently clone your empty new drive to your old one instead…

So to put this into perspective:

Germany has (again) spend more than 8 billion (the planned budget for 2024) purely on military equipment for Ukraine just in the first half of the year. More than most countries combined (for reference the UK loudly announced the “largest-ever military aid package” ever earlier this year… 0,5 billion in total).

And they simply can’t keep this up anymore while at the same time having to cut all budgets at home to stay within constitutional debt limits (PS: No, changing the constitutional debt limit isn’t an option. That would require votes from the opposition and they went apeshit obstructionist/populist the moment they were ousted).

And although I have a particularly strong opinion on what will actually happen, let’s hope EU countries can finally get their shit together to create a sustainable base for Ukraine support instead of constantly relying on single countries’ short term planning.

Mist, verklickt…

Our tax money was used to finance Russias war of agression

Because that’s not true. That’s the propaganda narrative that is repeated again and again.

1. Nordstream 2 was planned and paid by Gazprom (owned by Russia), Uniper (then part of Fortum - owned by Finland), Shell (UK), OMV (Austria), Engie (partly owned by France), Wintershall (Germany).

German tax payers did pay exactly zero (I don’t know enough about finances in Finland or France to know if they (indirectly) paid taxes for it. Those two -and Gazprom -where the only countries involved with the rest being private companies). German tax payers also didn’t care for European companies wanting to inrease their imports from Russia as Germany’s own gas consumption was stagnating for years.

The only actual interest for the project in Germany was pushed by the local government in the state were the pipeline ended… because of additional jobs in construction and operation created.

2. Germany financing Russia is also a lie people keep repeating. Actual trade balances are publically available. Germany pulled ~50 billion $ out of Russia over the years, while in the same time the US, UK, Poland and even Ukraine (although they are the ones not to blame here, as their options were limited) actually financed Russia via a massive trade deficit.

PS: Do you want to know who was Ukraine’s biggest financial supporter since 2014? Also a detail that probably won’t match your chosen reality.

and without 3 small nudges nothing tangible was going to change

What should they have changed?

Not opening NS2 in the first place? That is exactly what happenend. Before Russia started their invasion.

Or should they have reduced the deliveries through NS1 from nothing to even less… oh, wait…

Oh, I know. Should they have called Russia’s bluff about technical problems and then start legal procedings so German companies would not go bankrupt from payments for gas that they wouldn’t receive to finally close the Nordstream chapter? Again, that’s exactly what happenend.

And more than a month later an unused (NS1) and unoperational (NS2) pipeline exploded.

Please point out the change those “small nudges” (interesting choice of words for an act of war against a countries infrastructure btw…) brought.

Why wouldn’t the average Germans response be something like

Why do Germans react the way they do? Because we are sick of the lies and how screwing up then pointing fingers at Germany is Europe’s tried and true strategy number 1.

Germany’s dependence on Russian gas was slightly below EU average (no wonder when they were Europe’s 2nd biuggest gas exporter with no production because everyone imported Russian gas via pipelines ending in Germany)… Yet lying and phantasizing about Germany being dependent was easier than to acknowledge their mistake. And to add insult to injury some countries even screamed loudly at Germany for still importing Russian gas while getting exactly that gas for themselves, usually without it ever reaching Germany but only theoretically being bought from Germany on paper (looking at Poland in particular).

As already mentioned above Germany was one of the few European countries with a trade surplus not financing Russia. Yet telling the fairy tale of how they alone paid for Putins war is easier the telling a truth your voters wouldn’t like. Blaming someone else is much better when you want to keep your governing job.

Oh and let’s not forget oil. Let’s talk about the fact that every single country along that pipeline massivel increased their imports from Russia all through 2022 and the first half of 2023… everyone but Germany that is, while everyone screamed about Germany financing Russia via oil imports.

It’s also not limited to Russia in any way: Half of Europe has sold the majority (or all) of their harbors to China. But when Germany reacted by selling a minority share of one single terminal to compete with the massive disadvantage of chinese ships stopping anywhere else then shipping to Germany via land routes there was a massive international outcry why the evil Germans would try to sell out to China. Do you want to guess who worked on correcting that problem at home? Spoiler: Nobody, because the usual “but Germany”-diversion worked.

If you want more diverse reactions from Germans: Get a new scapegoat for once. Until that happens you will only see two reactions: ignoring the daily “Germany bad”-narrative or telling you very clearly what kind of bullshit this is. And judging by the amount of downvotes, insults and accusations of being a Russian troll I get here, the latter group is so small nowadays that people aren’t used anymore to get their propaganda narratives challenged.

Either that or people are really not able to argue anymore, operating mostly on feelings of righteous zeal and attacking everything challenging their dogma. But I’m (for now) still too much of an optimist to believe that version…

An welcher Stelle war ich das nicht? Ich war nicht derjenige mit “Halt die Klappe” und “Bist du gesoffen?”, sondern habe mich im Gegenteil bemüht, klare Argumente zu liefern und darzustellen, wie die Tatsachen von Narrativen verzerrt wurden. Scheinbar wohl vergeblich (ich kann die erhaltenen Antworten ja nicht mehr lesen…).

So facts you don’t like are complete shit and people telling an unconvenient truth are trolls… Sure…

How about pointing out any “complete shit that isn’t true” in a civilized manner? Oh, wait. That would require actual arguments beyond “I don’t want to accept reality so I reject it and insult everyone not agreeing”.

But again, I will even try to help you out:

When was NS2 opened? It wasn’t.

When was the certification required to open NS2 permanently withdrawn? Days before Russia’s invasion when Russia acknowledged independent republics in Ukraine, thus not respecting their territorital integrity.

How much gas was going through NS1 when it was detonated? Less than 10% in June, completely stopped in mid-July. Announced to be permanently stopped for technical reasons unless sanctions would end in August. (A bluff Germany called when sending them exactly the replacement turbine that was claimed to be stuck because of sacntions preventing the repair.)

How did the gas prizes develop when Russia announced the indefinite stop of all deliveries? They fell from ~320€/MWh in August to ~ 170€/MWh in late September… (and just for completion: the detonation of NS resulted in a minmal increase before the down trend continued to ~50€/MWh in November)

Which of those facts are “lies”? It should be really easy to point them out, so please do it.

Also how can facts be “anti-Ukraine propaganda” when I wasn’t even the one declaring it was Ukraine? That’s what guys like you did, to then cheer for it. I only pointed out that it’s totally stupid to cheer for something Ukraine allegedly did when the sabotage itself was crazy and pointless and the consequences (the real ones, not the medals you would love to give to terrorists attacking infrastructure) could only be bad should Ukraine really be behind it.

Edit & PS: And just to be crystal clear here as you seem to have problems understanding arguments. There was exactly one side with an interest in destroying Nordstream: Russia because they ran out of excuses to not fullfill their contracts. Ukraine (or any other country) sabotaging it, makes zero sense given the actual facts. So you aren’t even crazy once but twice. First by calling it a good deed that should be rewarded, then a second time by assuming it was an operation sanctioned by Ukraine as they had nothing to win but a lot of support to lose.

Sure… just like Poland spend half a year threatening to send German tanks without approval… while conveniently forgetting to ever ask in the first place (and being totally surprised when they actually did an eternity later…)

Genau… immer schön beleidigen, wenn man keine Argumente hat.

Aber hier, ich helf dir sogar:

Deutschland hat die Freigabe von NS2 verhindert (und das übrigens auch vor Russlands Invasion). Aber da niemand die Realität mag wurden wir mit Märchen überhäuft wie Deutschland in Wirklichkeit durch Sanktionen dazu gezwungen wurde (gegen die sie sich in ihrer Russlandliebe natürlich bis zum Schluss gewehrt haben 🤣).

Russland hat NS1 abgedreht, Monate vor der Sabotage. Und bewirkt hat dieser Versuch der Erpressung exakt überhaupt nichts. Nicht einmal die Preise gingen weiter rauf, weil der vorherige Preisanstieg eh schon mehr auf Unsicherheit am Markt als auf wirklichem Mangel basierte. Doch wieder war die Realität nicht gewollt, also gab’s die nächste Welle von “Jeden Moment werfen sich die Gassüchtigen Deutschen Putin an den Hals”-Lügen… unter anderem mit einem halben Dutzend Berichten über die geplante Einstellung aller Hilfen für die Ukraine und Blockade von EU Sanktionen durch Deutschland nur in den ersten 3 Tagen. 100% frei erfunden, aber wen stört das schon. Die meisten wohl nicht, da Fakten einfach zu leugnen viel einfacher ist, als seine fehlerhafte Meinung zu korrigieren.

2 Monate später hatte sich immer noch nichts geändert. Die Gaspreise waren angesichts der guten Speicherprognosen trotz 0 Gas aus Russland sogar im freien Fall.

Es gibt jetzt also genau zwei Möglichkeiten: Man lebt entweder in der Realität oder man hat dank Propaganda-induziertem Wahn den Kontakt zur Wirklichkeit verloren und halluziniert, dass Deutschland gewaltsam davon abgehalten werden muss, (vollkommen imaginäres - denn das Thema war in Wahrheit ja nun schon seit 2 Monaten abgehakt…) Gas von Russland zu kaufen.

In dem Fall, dass man in der Tat dem Wahnsinn verfallen ist und sich vor der Wirklichkeit verabschiedet hat, ergibt es natürlich Sinn einen kriegerischen Akt gegen einen Verbündeten zu begehen. Und auch diese Idioten noch zu bejubeln. Deshalb wird aber weder die bekloppte Tat an sich, noch deine genauso bekloppte Unterstützung sinnvoll.

Wer sich die Fakten anschaut, begreift, dass da unbenutzte Pipelines aus Jux und Dollerei zerstört wurden. Und dass es exakt keinen guten Grund gab (zumal das Risiko, wenn es auffliegt, ebenfalls existiert…), es sei denn, man ist dem eigenen Propagandablödsinn zum Opfer gefallen. Und wer das bejubelt ist schlicht genauso geistig verwirrt.

So und jetzt du. Und versuch’s mal zur Abwechslung mit Argumenten statt “Halt die Klappe” und “Bist du besoffen”.

Wieso sollte ich? Propagandalügen unwidersprochen hinnehmen ändert die Realität nicht. Es bringt nur verwirrte Disinformationsopfer wie dich dazu, noch lauter Märchengeschichten zum Besten zu geben und die Wirklichkeit zu verleugnen.

Und so bejubeln die dann einen idiotischen kriegerischen Akt gegen einen Verbündeten, der nur in der eigenen verdrehten Realität sinn ergibt.

It was a good deed.

If you define “good” as total batshit crazy insanity.

misinformation != desinformation

Both exist plenty…