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What if something happened to you? (reddthat.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/nix

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I'm working through some necessary issues in VMs as I work towards dropping Windows, but it occurred to me that I should pick a distro my non-techy partner could use in the event that something catastrophic happens to me. I really like the declarative/immutable distros, but perhaps something more traditional with btrfs snapshots would be better suited to such a use case...?

It's no secret that NixOS has a steep learning curve, but do any of you share a NixOS PC with family/partners/etc.? If so, what has that experience been like? Could they take over admin if you were incapacitated?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

You can't build a box that will survive long without your help. You're maintaining a living system, not a sculpture. It needs someone at the wheel making decisions. Updates will have breaking changes. Tokens and certificates will expire. Eventually hardware will fail.

The best you can do is provide an easy way to export the important data into a digestible format for your loved ones to manage with the skills they have. If that means pushing it into a managed service owned by Big Tech, so be it. You don't want to tacitly hurt them for their lack of interest in self-hosting.