I use rsync for this purpose and the only notable bottleneck is my download speed, fwiw.

It doesn’t copy data, no. Symlink is short for symbolic link. So it’s a pointer to another location. But it might be useful for you. Taking a guess at your goal, here’s a relevant example.

Say you moved all of your emulation stuff stored under /media/largehdd/retroarch. You could then symlink that directory to ~/.config/retroarch like so:

ln -s /media/largehdd/retroarch ~/.config/retroarch

That data is still stored on the large drive but will now also show under that symlinked directory.

I use file syncing (Syncthing) and symlinks to keep configs for some apps synced between devices. I don’t for Firefox, but it might work.

Could I maintain the same OS install for the life of a device? Sure. Can I resist disro hopping? Nope!

I made it, I think, 3 years on a Fedora install once.

I’m guily of the hopping on the bandwagon from Void to NixOS. But out of curiosity for NixOS not frustration over Void. Void is awesome, it fits the completely subjective picture in my head of what Linux should be.

This doesn’t fit the question exactly but I feel it’s in the same spirit, and a kind of interesting solution, I think.

Back in the early days of scryptcoin mining, I had a few gpu mining rigs running Linux. Occasionally they would hard lock and I’d have to power cycle them.

What I ended up doing is getting some usb to serial adapters, wrote a python script that ran on startup and would send a character over serial at a set interval in a loop. That was hooked up, if I recall correctly, to an attiny85 using softwareserial and some ttl to rs232 conversion. It would listen over serial and if it didn’t receive anything with a reasonable time frame it’d flip a relay that cut mains power to the pc, then flipped it back. A deadman’s switch, of a sort. It worked great!

I wouldn’t call ChromeOS Linux anymore than I would call MacOS FreeBSD (oversimplified comparison, but it works for my point).

It may be based on a Linux kernel but it contains closed source code that’s needed for essential functionality, and we don’t get to choose hardware independently of the OS, nor a different OS for the hardware.

It’s an ecosystem that’s hostile to user rights and in my opinion doesn’t fit the spirit of what Linux is.

Edit: I suppose that’s a bit gatekeeperish? But I don’t think Linux adoption should be achieved at the cost of user freedom and choice. It loses what makes it special at that point.

Yeah, I see a fair amount of gatekeeping and condescension in Linux communities. I also see a lot of people who truly want to be helpful, but that aspect is there.

I’ve seen Linux compared to car ownership a number of times, and I think that’s an apt comparison. I have the knowledge to use and perform basic maintenance on a car, and I have no interest in learning more. It’s a tool made for a purpose. Some people love to tinker with cars, and I can understand that. I love Linux and enjoy tinkering with it, but it generally won’t “just work” for most users. Yes, if you’re setting it up for your grandparents and they just need a web browser or something like that it’s probably fine but most users that aren’t Linux savvy are going to run into issues.

Linux is becoming ever more usable, and I think usage will continue to increase alongside that, but I don’t see it ever becoming a major personal desktop platform. Wouldn’t mind being wrong, but Linux will be fine, regardless.

That was more ranty than I had expected!

Something that ran from loadlin, I can’t remember. Slackware, probably.

There’s definitely a steep initial learning curve as you observed and dialing in your configuration is time consuming in my experience but once you’ve got things the way you like, it’s pretty smooth sailing from there.

Edit: removed compared to arch references. Not relevant to the comment.

From: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/btw-i-use-arch

BTW I Use Arch is a catchphrase used to make fun of the type of person who feels superior because they use a more difficult Linux distribution.

I think that’s fair to apply to some NixOS users. Source: BTW I use NixOS.

My suggestion just changes your threat model, so may not be a good one based on your wants.

Perhaps consolidate systems? Managing less devices = less points of failure. But adds the risk of any given failure being more severe.