Ultimately, the problem is much bigger than /etc/machine-id since there are dozens of hardware IDs on any PC that can be used by malicious telemetry to silently to uniquely identify and track you, and the only solution to this problem currently is to make sure you really trust any software you use.
Systemd, in particular, acts a lot like malware for Linux because if you try to reset your machine-id a long list of stuff that breaks in in it. You could make a cron script to reset /etc/machine-id every day, but machine-id is so deep in the stack that you’d also have to reboot to ensure it’s updated.
After reading through this whole comment thread, reading this was the last straw. I’ve been planning my exodus for a while.
Soon, I shall say “I use Artix, btw”.
It’s just another person explaining that they could have built a better init system, and literally every programmer was wrong except for them.
mate it’s a bit rude to necrobump
also i’m switching to NetBSD now lol
Lmao hell yeah brother, enjoy your journey
Also I got here from a recent comment link from another thread
Ohhhh that makes sense lol. Also don’t worry; I don’t actually mind being necrobumped.
But yeah, I will! The Windows to Debian to CachyOS to Arch to Artix to NetBSD pipeline is quite the ride.