I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for about 15 years. I had my system break down in other occasions in the same way you describe.
It is a nuisance, but luckily it never was a major problem. I believe once I had to reinstall the system, I was very happy to have a separate home partition.
I’m not sure what you mean by layering apps over the system, that could be interesting. Especially because I imagine something like a VPN needs root access. Is it possible to install a binary as a service with root access if that is not available in the repositories? I do for example have to use a quite obscure VPN protocol.
I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for about 15 years. I had my system break down in other occasions in the same way you describe. It is a nuisance, but luckily it never was a major problem. I believe once I had to reinstall the system, I was very happy to have a separate home partition.
I’m not sure what you mean by layering apps over the system, that could be interesting. Especially because I imagine something like a VPN needs root access. Is it possible to install a binary as a service with root access if that is not available in the repositories? I do for example have to use a quite obscure VPN protocol.