That depends on your use case, I just did a simple zpool with no redundancy because I wanted maximum speed/capacity and all my data is backed up on an external HDD. If you need redundancy, I would look online for how to configure that and what the optimal setup is.

Actually, I assumed you just had the SSD, if you have more than 256gb of free space between those HDDs, you can go ahead and remove the SSD from your zpool right now (unless your bootloader is there, then you’ll have to make an EFI system partition on one of the HDDs and install a bootloader first)

Fair, haven’t use Ubuntu or any of it’s derivatives in years

You need to add the new drive to your existing pool because ZFS stores data across all drives by default, similar to a RAID0. Then you remove the old drive and ZFS will automatically copy the data off the failing drive onto the healthy one and allow you to remove the failing drive with no data loss.

Manjaro is basically just arch Linux on a 1-2 week update lag, so you’d have just as much if not more success with EndeavorOS or raw Arch.

Honestly my main issue with Manjaro is still that they hold updates for a week or two for “testing” which tends to break certain AUR packages. I’d be less mad if the testing actually amounted to anything, but half the time they basically do nothing, and if there were any bugs Arch has released updates that resolve them already, which you won’t get for another week because of their update schedule. Anytime anyone talks about being interested in Manjaro, I just recommend they get EndeavorOS instead, it’s basically stock arch with a fancy installer and sane defaults which is great for anyone who mostly knows what they’re doing with Linux (or is at least capable of opening a terminal window and pasting error messages into google or, failing that, ChatGPT and following basic instructions)

Doesn’t Mint hold back kernel updates to major version upgrades like Ubuntu though? That could be problematic if they have newer hardware that’s better supported (or only supported at all) in newer kernel releases.

Anything with a recent kernel is fine. If you’re not very experienced, I’d recommend something like Fedora or OpenSUSE (both semi-rolling releases so you’ll get new kernels, graphics drivers, etc. but less likely to break for no reason than arch/gentoo derivatives).

Manjaro is fine if you don’t use the AUR, but arch/manjaro repositories on their own will be inadequate, and it will be so easy to get what’s missing from the AUR, which will eventually break something. This is because Manjaro holds back arch Linux updates for a week or two for “testing” purposes, but the AUR expects precisely the latest arch packages. If you’re thinking about Manjaro, do EndeavorOS instead. It’s the same thing (arch Linux with a more user friendly installer and relatively sane default apps/configs) with infinitely less hassle. Plus there’s really no point to using an arch-based distro without the AUR imo.

Garuda is also cool, I haven’t used it myself, but it’s supposed to be another preconfigured version of Arch more targeted towards gamers. YMMV, I’d probably just stick with EndeavorOS.

If you want an Ubuntu or Debian derivative, I’d go with Pop!OS. It’s basically Ubuntu without all the Ubuntu bullshit (snaps ludicrously out of date packages, etc), and they keep the kernel and video drivers pretty recent, unlike stock Ubuntu. Plus they have a cool desktop environment. Currently it’s a fork of GNOME, but they’re working on rewriting it from scratch and are making great progress, which will be interesting once it’s more developed.

Use an Ubuntu live USB, all recent versions of Ubuntu have ZFS drivers baked into the live environment. Then you should add your new SSD to the ZFS pool, and remove the old one from the ZFS pool. Your m.2 WiFi slot should be able to host the 2nd drive while you do this, but if not you can use an external USB housing for it, you’ll just have to make sure that the ZFS pool knows its UUID so that it knows it’s the same drive.

Yeah, like 98% of the times something broke while updating, it was something to do with ZFS, because the ZFS drivers aren’t in the kernel for licensing reasons, and there’s always a specific latest kernel version they’re compatible with that’s 1-2 versions behind current. Also the initramfs would sometimes get rebuilt without ZFS if there was a version mismatch, which prevents the system from booting properly, but it’s Fine because Half the Point of ZFS is snapshots.

Someone using arch in a more sane way than I was would probably have no issues (unless they use proprietary Nvidia drivers, which will VERY occasionally break, but that’s nbd).

I’d agree, but this is true of most distros tbh. Like obviously loads of stuff is gonna break on arch just due to the bleeding edge release cycle, but I had fewer issues running arch than Ubuntu, mainly due to PPAs and snap bullshit

There’s definitely an element of that, but imo their recent embrace of WSL and linux tooling for development is just to try and expand their market share in the software development space. Very few devs develop on windows unless they’re game devs, C# devs or working on something else that requires windows/Microsoft tooling, everyone else is on Linux and macOS because windows is bad for developing software.

It’s basically an admission that their tooling is bad, but it’s fine because you can just run linux development tools on windows now, so please don’t switch to Linux fully

No

Slackware’s package manager doesn’t even do dependency resolution. I respect the fact that it’s managed to keep existing this long and that so much of what it did inspired other distros, but I honestly have no idea why anyone would use it in 2023. Imo dependency resolution is the main reason to even have a package manager, without that I might as well install everything by cloning random git repos. If you want packages compiled from source, why not just use Gentoo (or Source Mage? Idk much about it, but I read through their website and it seems neat).

That being said, if anyone uses Slackware, I’d love to know why. It’s survived this long, surely it must be doing something right.