That doesn’t make the source code proprietary or non-open, it just means it isn’t a community driven project.

Slackware is still around, no past tense. What makes you think it was closed source?

I’m not sure who told you that an installation on a USB thumb drive should boot “almost instantly” - that’s a much slower device than a proper HDD or SSD, and it’s normal for booting off of those to at least take a bit of time. The slow boot and the slow performance when running are probably both the same thing - slow disk I/O. A fast CPU helps run computations quickly, but installing and launching programs involves a lot of writing and reading files, which doesn’t have much to do with CPU speed.

Your title mentioned GPT as in the partition table. The other user thought about ChatGPT.

You can check the release notes to be sure, but generally you can just perform the update and move on with life. Backing up your data is always a smart precaution.

Generate the binaries during test execution from known (version controlled) inputs, plaintext files and things. Don’t check binaries into source control, especially not intentionally corrupt ones that other maintainers and observers don’t know what they may contain.

You can use it for normal applications that aren’t sort of “system components” like a VPN. So if you want to install some office/productivity software, or a web browser, or a music/video player, then a Flatpak would be a reasonable choice. For most of those cases you would probably still choose the RPM if it is available, but Flatpak is also fine if not.

OK