Clonezilla, last I checked like a decade ago, can do a block by block copy and save an entire disk as an image. If it doesn't support btrfs, I assume that just means for things like reading and writing a disk image backup, not the disk/block device itself
Openly distributed while being private(-ish; I know blockchains aren't truly private but it could at least obfuscate it adequately against casual or semi serious attempts to identify someone)
I'll admit I'm no expert or even particularly well versed in blockchain technologies, but my (limited) understanding of them suggests this might actually be the kind of thing it's good at (as opposed to how it could seemingly do anything a few years ago and everyone was trying to shoehorn a blockchain into their products)
And to underline part of my comment, I did say "I wonder if..." rather than asserting that it would work or even that I bet it would work
No Starch in general is excellent quality, they're one of my main go-tos. I own several of the books in there and they're high quality, easily worth more than the bundle for each book.
No Starch Press does not publish AI generated crap, with very few exceptions they've been very high quality (the one exception I can think of is Linux Basics for Hackers, which should have just been called Linux Basics, and had a better editor because it was full of technical errors, but everything else I've gotten from them has been stellar quality)
Not so much "optimistic" as "the way it used to be"
I've got a fridge that's nearly 30 years old that we've never had to fix anything on (other than the ice maker). I thought it died about a week ago, turns out I just accidentally turned it off (issue with the coldness dial) and it's colder than ever right now.
I've also got a 6 or 8 year old fridge that I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it needs replacing before the old one.
Yeah, my problem though is that I think about actual profitability when I try that while they're playing a game of shells moving and manipulating quarterly profits to make a company look profitable so they can cut and run while the the company burns behind them
Then there's whatever the fuck companies like Microsoft and Apple and googie are doing that seem like horrible ideas to me that nobody seems to like and yet it never seems to hurt their bottom line enough to stop.
At this point I honestly think the only reason those three are still profitable is they've cornered their area of the market and there's just nobody for their customers to move to in adequate numbers to make a difference
But, I'm pretty jaded at this point... Maybe you're right and the googe will leave that workaround. At this point it won't matter to me because I don't use their search anymore and don't think I ever will again, and I certainly don't trust any new tech coming from them to not be dragged out back and shot the second I start to rely on it, so I just don't bother anymore
I've given up trying to understand what benefit companies like googie get from most of the shitty consumer-hostile decisions they make. You'll have to ask them when they inevitably shut that down what they get from doing that.
You're giving them a lot more credit than is probably warranted. They've killed off so many popular things and workarounds that really cost them nothing to leave available for the tech savvy they've very much shut down to force people to use the systems they want to push.
googie hasn't been tech savvy friendly for a while now
And that's the point, they came in shitting on the thing the group was there for
I'd still not ask that there, because people there are going to be more focused on the thing you don't want to use. A more generalist group would be a better place to ask that, as even the second way asked in a Gimp group is going to mainly attract people who want to defend their favored project or help you fix the issue with it, when that's not what you're after.
I mean, you can expect it, but you'll be disappointed for obvious reasons
Walking into a fan group and shitting on the thing they're fans of while asking for recommendations for alternatives is pretty much never going to result in a positive outcome
I found I could get Krita to work well with my Wacom tablet easily while Gimp was a mess for it and I never did figure that out... So I used Krita when I needed to draw, but for most everything else I found Gimp easier to get things done
Clonezilla, last I checked like a decade ago, can do a block by block copy and save an entire disk as an image. If it doesn't support btrfs, I assume that just means for things like reading and writing a disk image backup, not the disk/block device itself