Hello:

Got a reply after a few days.
As expected, nothing new, just the obvious:

As you can gather, my specific question was *not* answered.
ie: just what does [TRIM] do on a HDD (spinning rust)?

Further on there is a link which takes me to a page that does not have a link to the only WD document* with some information on what I wanted to know albeit with no clear answer.
* It is linked to on my previous post.

So no, no surprises here.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Ahh ...
Should have known.

The description was the giveaway.

So that makes two of us.

Please ...

Like I said: the end is near.

Best,

A.

Hello:

And this is something Linux Devuan actually needs to have in the repositories?
Who drummed up this crap?
Incredible ...

I tell you, the end is near.

A.

Hello:

From what I can see in the https://dyne.org/donate/ web page, [monero wallet] is accepted.

This string is whatever is used for the transaction:

Could not find a contact email to write to but there are quite a few other (Telegram and such) options.

Edit:

See this post for a way to contact [jaromil] to ask for the pertinent information:
--> https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2317#p2317

Best,

A.

Hello:

Hmm ...
Disclaimer:
Mine is probably not the most authorised opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. 8^°

From my point of view, usrmerge is a clusterfuck.
I see it as totally unneeded and poorly thought out / unplanned.
But that is no surprise to anyone at this stage of the Debian game.

That said, it is what it is: Excalibur gets [clean] installed and [dist-upgraded] as a usrmerge'd system.

It will be some time till the maintainers of all the packages present in the Debian repositories catch up to this.
If they don't, their applications will most probably throw errors on installation and as a result, will not work or will not work properly.
Some maintainers may not even bother.

But there are much more important issues for Devuan to deal with and this usrmerge crap pales in comparison.

With respect to your specific situation, there is one (and only one) real problem for you to think about and it has a name: 32-bit
Why do you think you need to run Excalibur on your 32-bit machine?

My dear Asus 1000HE from ca. 2010 has been running on Devuan since mid 2019, first on ascii and then Beowulf with a backported kernel.
And it still has the XPSP3 partition I previously installed on it, just for experimental purposes.
I purchased it second hand with barely any use for a very good price.

Unless I come across a very good motive to upgrade it, it will stay exactly as it is.
The coffee roasting software I am running is the last 32-bit version published and support for it is non-existent.
I do not want to risk screwing it up.

Not something to ignore, by any means.
Maybe the gods are telling you something?

Do think about keeping Daedalus running in your rig, maybe with a backported kernel (ask here before) if you can be sure it will help you in any way. 

Like I said: with a grain of salt.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Indeed ...
But I'll raise you one:

The default for Devuan should be Openbox with Mate as the DE option.

Best,

A.

Hello:

After thinking about this for a while I decided to contact WD support to see if they can explain if the [TRIM] command actually does something.

I should have a reply in a matter of days.

Then I found this page.
I don't undertsand much of what it says, but it would seem that the [TRIM] command does have a function in HDDs using SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording).

See this white paper* https://www.senetic.ci/i/objects/mmo_76 … 06_478.pdf
* p. 3 - Benefits for an SMR Drive

I'll post again if / when I get a reply from WD.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Must have been dragged by some other application.
In my case, conky-all needs it.
In yours, it is mpv.

Just thinking out loud.
Do libavdevice62, libguvcview-2.2, libsdl2 get removed if you purge mpv?
If so, you could use another media player and in the process rid yourself of libpulse0.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Indeed ...
Makes two of us.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Good first step.
Next one is to block it in /etc/apt/preferences.d.

The apulse package is (?) a compatibility layer to allow pulseaudio applications to work with ALSA.
Q: do you want pulseaudio applications running in your box?   

If not, check with aptitude why for the reason the apulse package was installed.
If there is no valid dependency, you can probably remove it.

No idea why conky-all wants libpulse0.
See description here: https://packages.debian.org/sid/libpulse0

Apparently it is a package of pulseaudio libraries.
But if you do not have pulseaudio installed, what would the use case be?

BTW:
Please use the [ c ] tag for in-line code and [ code ] tag for blocks of code.

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Right ...

# smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.1.0-41-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Blue Mobile (SMR)
Device Model:     WDC WD10SPZX-80Z10T2
Serial Number:    WD-WXD2A70DDH3S
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 212db172a
Firmware Version: 04.01A04
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm                                 ##### <--- HDD / spinning rust
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
TRIM Command:     Available, deterministic                 ##### <--- accepts TRIM 
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5319
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Tue Nov 25 10:25:51 2025 -03
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
# 

My question was more than anything oriented to the utility of fstrim on spinning rust.
I have read on the web that, while it does no harm, it is also useless.

Edit:
It seems that while the firmware actually accepts the TRIM command, it is ignored.

I guess that if fstrim is ignored by the HDD firmware (and does nothing in spite of reporting to the log file), I could leave things as they are.

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Yes.

But only one word was needed: ineptitude.

Cloudfare is arguably an essential part of the web these days.
And those behind it (should) know it. Recent events make me wonder.

Whether that is the proper way to do things or not is for another discussion altogether.
But, like it or not, it is a fact: Cloudfare is a weak link without the needed redundancy.

Redundancy that the WWW was supposed to have, by design.
So it boils down to basic common sense: you do not fuck around with an essential part of the web.

Which is exactly what these DHs did.

A.