Does lemmy have any communities dedicated to archiving/hoarding data?
Wait why keep Debian? What happened to Debian?
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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Hint: :q!
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Nothing, it's probably an attempt to have something stable and unchanging, so that aging doesn't show much.
The meme doesn't seem to be about Debian becoming bad, more like data hoarding.
FWIW :
fabien@debian2080ti:/media/fabien/slowdisk$ ls -lhS offline_prep/
total 341G
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 103G Jul 6 2024 wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2024-01.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 81G Apr 22 2023 gutenberg_mul_all_2023-04.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 75G Jul 7 2024 stackoverflow.com_en_all_2023-11.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 74G Mar 10 2024 planet-240304.osm.pbf
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 3.8G Oct 18 06:55 debian-13.1.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 2.6G May 7 2023 ifixit_en_all_2023-04.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 1.6G May 7 2023 developer.mozilla.org_en_all_2023-02.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 931M May 7 2023 diy.stackexchange.com_en_all_2023-03.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 808M Jun 5 2023 wikivoyage_en_all_maxi_2023-05.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 296M Apr 30 2023 raspberrypi.stackexchange.com_en_all_2022-11.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 131M May 7 2023 rapsberry_pi_docs_2023-01.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 100M May 7 2023 100r-off-the-grid_en_2022-06.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 61M May 7 2023 quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com_en_all_2022-11.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 45M May 7 2023 computergraphics.stackexchange.com_en_all_2022-11.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 37M May 7 2023 wordnet_en_all_2023-04.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 23M Jul 17 2023 kiwix-tools_linux-armv6-3.5.0-1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 16M Oct 6 21:32 be-stib-gtfs.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 3.8M Oct 6 21:32 be-sncb-gtfs.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 2.3M May 7 2023 termux_en_all_maxi_2022-12.zim
-rw-r--r-- 1 fabien fabien 1.9M May 7 2023 kiwix-firefox_3.8.0.xpi
but if you want the easier version just get Kiwix on whatever device in front of you right now (yes, even mobile phone assuming you have the space) then get whatever content you need.
If need a bit of help I recorded TechSovereignty at home, episode 11 - Offline Wikipedia, Kiwix and checksums with a friend just 3 weeks ago.
I also wrote randomly update https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/Vademecum and coded https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/offline-octopus but tbh KDE-Connect is much better now.
The point though is having such a repository takes minutes. If you don't have the space, buy a 512Go microSD for 50EUR then put that on, stuff it in a drawer then move on. If you want to every 3 months or whenever you feel like it, updated it.
TL;DR: takes longer to write such a meme than actually do it.
Watch out for flash data corruption. Lots of cheap flash (USB sticks, SD cards, SSDs) lose data after just a few years of offline storage. Something something quantum tunnel bullshit, iirc.
So either look for media that guarantee long cold storage retention (lots of businesses need to keep shit for 10 years for tax reasons), or occasionally plug it in and let do the housekeeping.
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The English Language Wikipedia probably wouldn't be hard, or Debian Stable.
All of Debian's packages might be a tad more expensive, though.
This might be a good place to start for Wikipedia;
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_Wikipedia
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I stumbled across this sort of fascinating area of doomsday prepping a few weeks back.
A nice addition to that, don't just make it a USB, but a raspberry pi. So you'd have a reasonably low-powered computer you could easily take with you.
Not suggesting this one as it seems a bit expensive to me, but https://www.prepperdisk.com/products/prepper-disk-premium-over-512gb-of-survival-content?view=sl-8978CA41
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Curious about the mindset of the one (so far) person who has downvoted this post. What is there to dislike about archiving Linux and Wikipedia? π€
They are probably using a phone app which allows you to swipe sideways to downvote and also using screen gestures to 'go back'. I've accidentally downvoted things this way.
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How would one go about making an offline copy of the repos? Asking for a friend.
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Last year I bought a hard copy of my favorite webcomic in case the website goes down.
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What's a way to create a local repo mirror?
Yeah not gonna lie, i think i heard someone in a youtube video a while back talk about how the entirety of wikipedia takes up like 200 gigs or something like that, and it got me seriously considering to actually make that offline backup. Shit is scary when countries like the uk are basically blocking you from having easy access to knowledge.
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we need all repos to be stored offline, and documentations to troubleshoot.
the 1st i have no idea how much space we will need. Most linux packages are prerry light, no? But there is A LOT of them...
the 2nd is easy. Heard someone say the entire of wikipedia is 200GB, should be doable. Dont forget the technical wikis too: Debian, Gentoo, Arch.
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Wait, isn't there an offline copy of a part of Wikipedia? The article Just by yourself a nice printer with enough ink and do it yourself ;)
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