I have a weekly cron task that downloads the full version with photos to my NAS, for totally normal and routine "purposes".

That they are a "Full Stack DevOps Engineer". When I hear that I die a little inside.

Sorry, I meant to say hashes are irreversible, or that that hashes are not reversible...I changed my train of thought in the middle of a sentence.

I hope you were joking... MD5 isn't encryption, it's a hash. Encryption has to be reversible with a passphrase, hashes are not irreversible.

Everyone knows that the mainstream flash media is so left wing that's going to fail.

Please explain "CentOS - as old as the hills"...

As an avid linux user/systems administrator for over 11 years...I still do not understand why you need both server and desktop versions. Once you pick a distrobution, you should choose either bleeding edge or stable...those should be the only two versions you really need to worry about. I've also been a huge user of RH and it's forks (previously WhiteBox, currently CentOS). If I needed a desktop installation you simply do not install the server packages. Can someone explain why we need a dedicated desktop version?