this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Yeah the important stuff is backed up, but I am still concerned my entire OS will suddenly go kaput. How fucked am I?
The OS is the least important part of your computer.
It'd be bad if I were working on something and the entire thing just suddenly broke down before I have the time to save and backup 😅
If it's your os drive that dies, nothing important has been lost except for a few minutes of work. You can boot from a variety of media (cd, usb...) for recovery, or drive replacement. Worst case, you'll have to reinstall a few things in the following days.
It's also why it's not a bad idea to separate the various aspects of the system on distinct drives.
If you have everything you need backed up you can reinstall on a new hard drive and restore everything you need. So you should not be completely fucked. Just an inconvenience you might have to go through. You will lose the stuff not backed up so if any of that is a pain to get again it might be more painful to restore everything.
Others have said some thing you might want to try. But having a spare disk you can swap to is never a bad idea. Disks to fail and you should plan for what to do when they do. Backing up your data is a good first step.
I would say it is not a bad idea to just get a new disk now and go through the process of restoring everything anyway - you can treat it like your disk has failed and do what you would need to do to restore. With the ability to swap back when you need to.
This is a good way to find things you might have missed in your backups.