Whilst other distros move to a Weston (corrections please?) era Intel x86 2013 ish?

Bravo, I think. That's going to be tough.

On a related track, is there any talk of 128 bit chips in general?

If you haven't tested your backups, you ain't got a backup.

Upvoted.

Appreciate the reply, but I don't mind some proprietary code. There are very few reviews of open code by respected bodies (I'm writing in generality here). I'm certainly not qualified to review code. Just being open is only the beginning of the journey.

As we've seen with some open software recently there are some active hackers successfully targeting open software because it is open. Such exploits are not always discovered in good time.

https://thenewstack.io/why-so-much-open-source-software-is-vulnerable-to-hackers/

https://thehackernews.com/2025/01/github-desktop-vulnerability-risks.html

Etc etc.

I place store by the warrant responses and action of government entities against some software.

https://netboot.xyz

Probably 1+ 6t (that's before it was merged). No bloat nice phone.

Or my old BlackBerry before they stopped bothering to test anything and rested on their laurels. I miss the one place portal everything posted its notifications etc. Android is awful for that.

I like my Pixel 7 Pro (current phone) but I have to have a launcher on it because their home screen sucks.

Use an anonymous email proxy like (https://)addy.io . Create an email address for every site.

Hopefully, I haven't misunderstood your question.

I agree with you.

Traditions take time to evolve; and also to dissolve.

Nothing is devoid of global politics.

I don't think that you can. Downloads is 'protected' location these days too.

If you're using something like Syncthing, you can't connect a Syncthing folder to it.

Second vote for Niagara. Admittedly I haven't tried other third party launchers. [Pixel 7 Pro owner who balked at the standard Pixel screen on sight in a way that I hadn't previously with any phone]

They controlled interest rates like Nigel Lawson, mentioning a blip after jump-starting the economy, slashing tax rates in the eighties and setting up a election win. Inflation hit mid/late-double digits because Lawson didn't want to raise interest rates with the election looming.

The only thing I applauded Brown for was the delegation of the inflation control brief to the BoE. And now we're back to the inflation roller coaster that we were.

Political control of interest rates vs independent control. You'd think they'd be different.

FFS.

People also believe that there's a god that changes water into wine, walks on water, .. too. People believe all sorts of stuff, weird or not.

Worry about things that you can do something about or explicitly react too.