I’m a long time Linux user looking to replace a headless Debian x86 server with a VIM3. Its not a production system but reliability and security are still pretty important to me. I’d like to keep it up to date with patches, ideally I’d like to stay as close as possible to vanilla Debian, and I’d like to understand the things I need to trust.
I’ve successfully run the Debian image downloaded through krescue and also the Ubuntu server image built from github actions. Things are going ok, but I had a few basic process questions:
- I notice there is just one Debian image on dl.khadas.com which is a release candidate from September. There are more images for Ubuntu but a lot of those are pretty old too. What drives when new images are posted to dl.khadas.com and how are those likely to compare with the ones I would build myself? Have the ones on dl.khadas.com gone through any more testing?
- I’d really like to understand more about what Fenix is doing and the boundary between Fenix and Ubuntu. Are there any posts or other documentation on the design or structure of Fenix or is it just a question of diving into the source?
- I’m a bit bothered by the fact that building an image needs root on the host computer (and that even the docker container needs privelged execution, sysadmin capability, and loop control on the host). Is there a quick answer for why is this needed?
- I found this post noting that PCIe had been disabled on Linux 5.x and it scared me a bit. Is there a chance I might one day do an update and have some driver I was depending on be disabled? Is there a page summarizing the current status of each driver in each kernel or something else that I should be checking before updates?
thanks