People saying what you wrote say it because they don't understand what IaaS is. I've been maintaining OpenStack since 2011 in Debian, and I'm telling you, it's not just "flowchart/diagramming symbol", it's a real thing that makes it possible to do stuff. What's truth, is that companies setup their own cloud, and move from one cloud (they rent) to another (they own). And that's why OpenStack is so relevant these days. And that's the nicety of it. So it's all but stupid ...

How about mandating only free software based cloud services, like those based on OpenStack? That way, no controvercy: the big 3 are out ... :)

You aren't getting the point of a connected drive. The point is that it is hosted in a data center, so you can actually share the data easily, over internet. Also, I believe they use OpenStack Swift as a backend (just like many others), so then your data are stored 3 times in a distributed system. That's a way safer than RAID-1 or ZFS. Sure, you may use Swift at home too. But would you run 3 servers ? The cost of electricity makes it then in the advantage of the cloud provider offer, than is having hundreds of servers shared between many customers.

FIY, at my $job, we are now standardizing on 16x 22TB HDD servers, and push 6 servers at a time on our clusters, because 6 availability zone, and 3 regions (2 data centers) to make it safer. That's very different approach from a small NAS...

Even with half the price, this is still more expensive than the offer from Infomaniak (if you calculate with a correct change rate). With the bonus than data will be hosted in Switzerland (far away from 3 letters agencies). Why is this "shadow drive" making the headline in Slashdot then ?

Please don't do like Devuan people do: do not pretend Devuan is a "fork". It's just one of the 140+ Debian derivative, not at all a fork...

Should we be happy that Systemd is 1.7 Million lines? Of course not. Its size is one of its design problem: it's too big, and doing too many things.

OpenStack immature? Man, this was in 2014... We're in 2022. OpenStack is 11 years old, and it runs very well.

Also, adding the word "crap" in all sentences doesn't buy you anything, and make me think you're the immature :(.

For someone that operates it, it's probably correct that it's hard to tackle. I wouldn't leave someone in charge without at least one year of experience using it. However, for someone using OpenStack, it's an administrator dream becoming reality. Servers are popped up in a matter of seconds, when it previously took hours to setup physical hardware. OpenStack is also very feature reach. "Just an haproxy" you say? Well yeah... just an haproxy that runs on 2 VMs with a VRRP port to handle failover. Failovers which are transparent, so you can easily spawn a new pair of VMs. It would take you days to setup by hand. And everything is like this for all other services. All you're getting is "just" automations, but at the end of the day, this is what the cloud is about.

What's right in what you wrote, is that people are building software the wrong way. It should be packaged, and deployed anyways an admin wants, and never forced into containers / k8s. This should be an administrator choice. But hey... devs are NOT admins, so they don't know. You just need to teach them...

The biggest problem is the cloud act. Because AWS is from the USA, it cannot get itself out of it. Everything else is just bullshit.

Choose freedom. Choose free software. Choose a cloud powered by OpenStack, or operate it yourself (or both, in a hybrid way). It's not THAT difficult, and a way cheaper in the long run.

To make it even more freedom oriented, choose OpenStack on Debian, so that you choose the least locked-in solution (Debian being the only distribution with OpenStack that will not enforce trademark if you fork it).

It is untruth that OpenStack offers less. I'm sure that the vast majority of AWS users are just using the basic functionality of AWS, which are all implemented in OpenStack (VMs, object store, elastic block storage, backups, DNS, load balancers, Kube as a service, DB as a service, Shared FS as a service, etc. are all included in OpenStack, and I doubt you need more). And on top of this, you can run OpenStack yourself, and even modify it if you like, because it's fully free software.

Now, if you're searching for an OpenStack public cloud, there's 50+ regions available from openstack.org ... including some that are IN YOUR COUNTRY, meaning away from the US's cloud act... which is what AWS cannot go away from.

As usual, Ubuntu only focuses on a tiny fraction of what Debian does: only what they put in "main". That means a lot of software aren't supported. Now with this announce, it looks like it's going to be an even smaller subset.

To me, it looks like Canonical is getting jealous of the Debian ELTS thingy, and is trying to apply a commercial model. Future will say if it's a good idea, or a major failure.

The question remains: is this still free software? Why should we care then (since Unity is in Debian)?

This is free as in free beer. That's not what we want, we want the full 4 freedoms. That you don't care, and think it's the same thing is ok, but please don't pretend everyone else is being silly and complaining for no reason.

Besides this, for anyone doing some real work, 16 servers is nothing. For something like OpenStack, for example, 16 servers is absolutely nothing. I have just provisioned a new cluster, I'm up to 30 physical servers, not including the Ceph storage and compute nodes (48 if you include them, but that's just a start). Previously, with CentOS, I would have had no limitation. Lucky, I'm on Debian! :)

There's a problem with your point 4 and 5. The type of event that happened in Texas, happen when there's a huge difference of temperature between the poles and the equator. Then pockets of cold air are driven to the south. That's the opposite of what you're describing, so I don't understand... Or maybe you're just plain wrong with your explanation attempts ? :)

That's not even the issue.

A passport is typically used to cross a border. That's what it is for.

Now, we're told that we're going to have new borders:
- at the cinema
- at the restaurant
- ...

Where does this stop? Do they add a checkpoint for food stores? Do I need a passport to go to the bakery and buy fresh bread? Will there be armed police to enforce this?

This is worse than any scifi book or movie... I'm sick not of covid, but thinking about all of this.