Guix, NixOS, Gentoo. Which situations do you mean?

Nice dual display setup :)

«I load ip_tables with modprobe, only to lose it after a reboot»

Write the module name into:
/etc/modules-load.d/<name>.conf — on most modern systemd distributions (Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, etc.)
or /etc/modules on Debian-style systems.

OpenRC’s modules-load service reads configuration files from the following locations, in order of precedence
/usr/lib/modules-load.d/
/run/modules-load.d/
/etc/modules-load.d/

echo “ip_tables” >/etc/modules-load.d/ip_tables.conf

You probably have two kernels now on disk. Compare their configs. Old kernel probably had trackpad compiled in. Anyway, you need to find the module which supports your device, and add it’s name into the list of modules to load.

Непонятно, что нужно сделать. Выявить причину, по которой загрузка занимает 2 минуты? Починить трекпад?

Идея с программой для инвентаризации, в которую надо было помещать характеристики и происхождение предметов, была хороша.

If disks are not encrypted then he can just set a new password from chroot.

the disk is encrypted

Oh…