On that note, considering the original engines are similar I wonder if OpenRCT2 and OpenLoco have any big similarities in the code base as well…

Probably! From the About OpenLoco page:

The OpenLoco project started in early 2018 by the same group of people behind OpenRCT2.

Can you explain? As a Mint user with really old hardware, I appreciate using the LTS kernel. However, I also appreciate them giving users other options.

If you have new hardware, why wouldn’t you use the Edge ISO?

They have a fairly new version called Edge that ships with a newer kernel (currently 6.5).

What packages are broken? I haven’t run into any.

P.S. I think Snaps are now the fuss, so I still think Mint is Ubuntu with the fuss.

I’m generally in the same boat. I don’t think of Mint’s packages as “old”, but “stable”. I’ve had a few cases where I want the latest features, and there are easy ways to get new versions. Dialing down instability isn’t so easy.

Ah, that makes sense. Were you using Obtainium or just manually grabbing updates manually? FFUpdater can help you keep up to date, and here’s the folder of released apks. I know this messes with you workflow, but IMHO, it’s probably better to keep with the browser you like. However, if you decide to try an alternative, all the best of luck!

AFAIK, Focus is FOSS. If that’s correct, can you confirm that your issue is:

• Builds aren’t released on F-Droid, and you don’t want to use the Play Store. Would FFUpdater fit your purpose?
• You want an alternate to Firefox Focus which is also FOSS. Could you let us know what deficiencies an alternate would correct?
• Something else?

this is a notebook with an Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60GHz (2 cores, 4 threads) with 8 GB RAM and installing and upgrading on xubuntu 23.10 was already really, painfully slow.

Have you put an SSD in there, or are you still running on spinning rust? In my experience, even a cheap SSD will make a huge difference.

I wouldn’t recommend installing a distro just to install a different DE. IMHO, you should be fine with cinnamon. I’m using Linux Mint 21.3 with cinnamon on an x201 (Thinkpad released in 2010), though I did up the RAM to the 8GB max. However, if you want XFCE, is there a reason you don’t want to use Linux Mint 21.3 with XFCE? If that’s no good for you, I’d recommend finding a distro that fits most of your needs right out of the box, maybe Peppermint Linux or MX Linux?

So, if you don’t have an Apple/Android device (and the app installed), you just can’t use web-banking? That’s pretty crazy!

I think I’d still prefer to use a 3rd-Party TOTP app but at least Steam’s app adds some value by pushing a notification when you login.

I think it’d be helpful to understand why you want a lightweight distro. I’m running Linux Mint (Cinnamon) on a x201 (~13 years old) and am happy with it’s performance. I doubt you’re going to have any issues with any distro with your laptop (as others have pointed out, mainstream Thinkpads are well supported by Linux).

I know I have friends who run beasts of machines but refuse to “waste” resources on niceties like animations and whatnot. If you’re into that, I assume you want to optimize and tinker, that’s different that lightweight.

I suspect from that wording, “unofficial versions” will probably be licenced code.

IMHO, it sounds like it’ll be “Source Available.” Especially

Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version.

Just because the software is open source doesn’t means a product running it is going to be free. Heck, even some FOSS projects have financial contributors who get perks like software support, access to pre-released software, and input into feature development.

Also why. The. Hell. Are. People. Still. Using. Virtualbox? What is this? 2005? You’re already running a kernel with built in world tier type 1 virtualization.

Honestly, for me, it’s probably just momentum at this point. I’ve been using Virtualbox for at least 15, maybe 20 years now. I don’t use it much anymore with how good docker, etc. have become. Any recommendation on what I should be using instead?

You can setup unattended-updates to handle most of those.

I’m mainly concerned about:

1. Not losing data if one drive dies on me.

Sure, that’s what RAID is designed to do. However, I’d suggest also looking into what happens when your array is degraded and how to rebuild it.

2. Fast reads

I’m a bit surprised you need fast reads with a media server. You’re probably going to have to clarify your needs a bit more.

3. Easy plug and play expansion

Since I’ll have 8 drives (or 6, if I use the smaller server, it would be nice if I could swap out one of them without losing data and add a larger one, which would then get used automatically. Is that something that RAID is good for?

Standard RAID levels generally don’t have options to add larger drives. I’m not sure what you mean by “plug and play”. I’m pretty sure almost all setups will involve a fair bit of configuration.

I’m hesitant to set up backups because it’s going to be a lot of data.

It’s also a lot of data to lose if things go more wrong than you expected (multi-drive failure, bit-rot, etc.).

Is HBA mode that rare? It seems pretty common. Either way, we don’t know OP’s hardware.

And I’m not scared of RAID controller failure, I’m scared of single point failure. I know it’s highly unlikely, but the risk for stranded data is unacceptable IMHO unless you’re recommending OP make sure they have a spare on hand.

Also, I never even mentioned ZFS (I’ve actually never even used it).