I really do hate Discord and other types of chat-oriented help and forums. Mailing lists are still the gold standard, IMHO. It's super easy to keep updated, works with any computer, etc. And most importantly you're not using somebody else's server.
You've never heard of John Titor? In all seriousness while you don't have to believe in time travelers, there is a lesson to be learned there. Look what happened to the Digital Domesday Project. If preservation efforts had begun earlier it might all be online now.
They recently upgraded FFS for 64-bit. I think they have the right philosophy, these FS's you mention are FAAATTTTT and would probably at least double to size of the tree. You can always set up a NAS with ZFS and simply use it with NFS.
Typing this on my T420 running OpenBSD. It does everything I really need it to do. I don't play (new) games, and I have a more powerful server tucked away here in case I have any CPU-intensive jobs I need done.
Honestly after seeing the absolute state of Linux on the desktop over the last decade, there is no reason for me to even consider it any more.