It's not as bad with LVM since LVM is more flexible. A swap file does still make it easier to change the size as needed though. If you need more swap, you can spin up a new swap file pretty much instantly while the system is running, without having to repartition. You can have both a swap partition and a swap file active at the same time though.
On systems where the data is encrypted, also encrypting the swap makes sense so I'm glad Debian does that.
I don't use hibernation so I'm not sure.
I've seen so many setups where people encrypt their data but forget to encrypt their swap.
This is solid research, and this evidence is really going to put Sony into an awkward position.
Companies shouldn't say you "own" a digital product if they can revoke the license at any time. Owning should mean something like when you buy a game from GOG - you get a non-revokable, DRM-free copy you can use indefinitely. Otherwise, you're really just leasing it.
It's mentioned on the wiki, but in California it's illegal to use words like "buy" or "purchase" on the checkout page for licenses like this. They have to show a clear notice that you don't actually own the product, which is why Steam added a banner on their checkout page.
People still use swap partitions instead of swap files?
Definitely true. The Pi 5 is especially powerful compared to older versions, but it can get kinda expensive once you add things you'd want for a server, like a case, SSD hat, etc.
Ex-office mini and small form factor PCs (Lenovo Tiny/ThinkCentre, HP ProDesk/EliteDesk, Dell Optiplex, etc) can be a better deal than a Pi. In the US at least, you can often find 9th or 10th gen Core i5 systems for less than $150 on eBay. Works great as a server.
A lot of companies have a 3-4 year refresh cycle, after which the hardware is fully depreciated (essentially meaning its value to the company is $0) and they have e-waste companies collect them. The e-waste recyclers test them, refurbish the ones that still work, and list them on marketplaces like eBay.
I forgot to mention - stay far away from SSDNodes. Their prices look good, but they massively oversell their RAM. They use ballooning (virtio_balloon) to overallocate RAM, and require you to use their customized Linux distro images that have it enabled. Ballooning means that they take unused RAM from your VM and lend it to other VMs to use. If you try to use all your RAM, they shut down your VPS.
GreenCloud, HostHatch, and RackNerd all let you install whatever OS you want, by mounting an ISO, connecting to the VPS via VNC, and going through the normal setup process just like you would on a regular computer. They do have pre-built images, but I always prefer to install from my own ISO so I know that the installation doesn't have any non-standard modifications.
Thankfully, most VPS providers don't oversell RAM or disk space.
My guess would be renting a dedicated server, or a home server. It can end up cheaper than colo.
self host?
Hosting at home, renting a dedicated server, or colocating are all considered self-hosting.
They're reliable, but overpriced for what you get, especially after the Akamai acquisition. Akamai are not known for affordability :)
I use GreenCloudVPS for a bunch of things. They used to have VPSes starting at $15/year for 2GB RAM and 20GB disk, but their current budget deals are still good (starts at $25/year for 4GB RAM and 35GB disk). These are on older hardware (mostly AMD EPYC Rome Zen 2 systems, ~5 years old) which is why they haven't been affected by increased RAM and storage prices yet. https://greencloudvps.com/billing/store/budget-kvm-sale
They also have "premium" plans which are newer (AMD EPYC Milan Zen 3 or Genoa Zen 4, and PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage in RAID10): https://greencloudvps.com/billing/store/premium-kvm-sale
HostHatch is good too. Their regular pricing aims to compete with Hetzner, but in 13 locations worldwide. https://hosthatch.com/products. They do sometimes have sales on LowEndTalk with pricing similar to GreenCloud's "premium" plans.
RackNerd sometimes have good deals, although they've discontined quite a few of them recently. You can use https://racknerdtracker.com/ to see currently active deals. I still see a 2GB RAM + 35GB storage deal for $35/year for example.
I suspect all the very cheap ones (<$50/year) will eventually increase pricing. GreenCloud and HostHatch own all their hardware. Right now they use older hardware that's already reached break-even, but all hardware needs to be replaced eventually, and the replacement cost for things like enterprise SSDs is a lot higher than it was in the past.
If you want to stick to big names, OVHcloud and Hetzner both have pretty good VPS pricing. OVH runs theirs on very old hardware like Haswell (2014/2015 era) Xeon E5 CPUs which is the main reason why they have cheaper pricing that Hetzner.
There's also AWS Lightsail that's essentially Amazon's version of a VPS. Storage and data transfer are included in the monthly price, unlike EC2 where it costs extra. I'd only use it if you like AWS or want the comfort of using a very big company though - performance is notably worse than a provider like GreenCloudVPS or Hetzner.
I'm not affiliated with any of these companies. This is just my personal experience :)
I wish more modern TPUs were available for purchase. Google's TPU v8i is very powerful, but you can only rent it via Google Cloud. (that and they're most useful in big clusters, and the pricing for such a cluster is definitely out of reach for anyone that's not running their own data center)
Even without hibernation, data in apps you have open will end up in the swap if your system is ever RAM-constrained.