If you really want it to still work in 20 years, you should probably install to a virtual disk, so you aren't limited by lack of hardware support in 20 years.

+1

after 20years, you can still move the virtual disk around.. backup it up, grow/shrink disk space... easier management, than a hdd/dvd that could suffer errors/get lost/break/etc in that time...

Will dvd / blue ray drives be around 20 years from now?

That is a very good question: https://www.quora.com/Will-DVDs-still-be-around-in-2037

But the point of archival DVDs & Blu-Rays is that at least they'll definitely last until the players stop being available, at which point you can transfer the data to another medium.

The problem 20 years from now, will be to find something that play a DVD or Bluray. Remember tapedrives (still used when reliability is important) and Floppys. Maybe a portable ssd might still be supported. And probably tapes still as well ;-). But what format ???

Have a nice day
Lars H

For archives you should use archival Blu-Rays or DVDs. Hard drives don't last long.

Will dvd / blue ray drives be around 20 years from now?  It might be ok to say yes archive on this medium it is future proof, but is it?

The dvd sets from debian sound like a good idea. I dont want whole repo just enough of a variety of programs, the 3 dvd images debian has at 4g each seem like that would cover what i wanted.

I had planned to have time capsule of my old laptop with a few hard disks with debian, devuan and slackware on them, put them into faraday sealed suitcase and put into storage area, but then i think of battery life of the laptops so probably not a good idea, so maybe just the hard disks with cables and mounting hardware / external enclosures.

Is in your opinion the virtual disk a better method for this type of archive?

If you choose a mirror during the install, it doesn't matter whether you use the dvd or the netinstall iso - it will pull from the repo and will be current.

If you really want ALL the packages from the repo on dvd, then take the devuan dvd for installing a fresh system and take the debian dvd set to pull any individual packages you might want that aren't on the devuan dvd. Just don't install any packages from the debian disks that need systemd.

If you really want it to still work in 20 years, you should probably install to a virtual disk, so you aren't limited by lack of hardware support in 20 years.

i have old hard drive i want to fill with devuan, i want to have it as archive for operating system and programs that may work 20 years from now on hardware i have that works with devuan fine. What would be the best way of getting a vast library of packages, i dont want whole debian repositories just broad spectrum of applications. Would i be better off installing from dvd sets or can netinstall do same thing?

edit: oops im sorry, i come from debian and see there is no dvd sets available that i search for, maybe in the future i hope.

I suppose slackware is better option for archival operation linux system. I have so many issues last 6 months with systemd and debuan when i find devuan it just work and keep working day after day, same with slackware.