"Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to."
Before RPI existed, I always made filesystem images for USB sticks in NetBSD so that writes never touched "disk" ("diskless"). This allows me to remove the USB stick after boot, freeing up the slot for something else
BSD "install images" work this way
I have been using the RPi with a diskless NetBSD image since around 2012; there are no SD card writes, the userland is extracted into RAM
I can pull out the SD card after boot and use the slot for something else
If I want data storage, I connect an external drive
It's been wild to read endless online complaints from so-called "technical" RPi users for the last 13 years about SD card wear and tear
To me, it's another example of how it's possible to have a solution that is as old as the hills and have it be completely ignored in favor of a "modern" approach that is fatally-flawed
Before RPI existed, I always made filesystem images for USB sticks in NetBSD so that writes never touched "disk" ("diskless"). This allows me to remove the USB stick after boot, freeing up the slot for something else
BSD "install images" work this way
I have been using the RPi with a diskless NetBSD image since around 2012; there are no SD card writes, the userland is extracted into RAM
I can pull out the SD card after boot and use the slot for something else
If I want data storage, I connect an external drive
It's been wild to read endless online complaints from so-called "technical" RPi users for the last 13 years about SD card wear and tear
To me, it's another example of how it's possible to have a solution that is as old as the hills and have it be completely ignored in favor of a "modern" approach that is fatally-flawed