Edit: It works! Not beautiful and shows a concerning amount of “Error” lines on startup but it will do. I got VSCodium and ESP-IDF running, at least – and CMake isn’t awfully slow despite it being a crappy 4GB RAM machine (not easily upgradeable). The first boot took a while and I haven’t rebooted since, I guess it will be below 30 seconds next time (Mint on same machine but HDD was about 1 minute).
Edit: I hope I chose the right kernel here, surprisingly not much info online on this! Also, I picked “targeted” because the 10-year-old system does not use any cutting-edge hardware and all drivers should be auto-detected, I think.
After some experience with Linux Mint, I gathered the courage to try another distro. I’d like to turn an old laptop into an IPTV receiver plus FTP/OpenVPN/HomeAssistant server with occasional desktop use. I first installed Windows 11 just in case my family needs to use it (it fucking sucks, the built-in PS/2 keyboard doesn’t work half the time but that’s an issue for later) but now I’ll be turning it into a dual-boot setup with Debian as the primary option. Please give me some encouragement, I’m really afraid of new things.
Old pic: https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d4bf0222-4fc1-42ab-a3e9-464087dec3af.png
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VSCodium
Try Kate.
(The real answer is probably emacs/vim but I’m not that cool.)
I love Debian. Been using it on my laptop for over a year. Some specific drivers are a little fiddly if you have nvidia graphics but it’s not too bad, lots of good info on the debian wiki.
same here even though i don’t use it much anymore.
for me, it was both the distro that i had used the longest at home due to rock solid stability and it’s become a signal to me that the shop i’m considering working in has rock solid people working on it.
i’m going to miss working on debian in a professional capacity and watching it due it’s thing in real world production capacities for millions of people at a time.
You’ve used Debian for a while? Well, you might know something about one of the problems that were a factor in my hop from Mint: I installed a stable release in 2020 and used the computer as a MMPC every so often, but then I set up a DVI cable to the family Windows PC so the MMPC became redundant, and will be until we switch from satellite to IPTV next year. The computer lay mostly unused for 2 years and then it turned out that it wouldn’t update to a newer, supported release. I gave up troubleshooting that. What kind of distros are most prone to this?
you have to keep your sources up to date if you don’t check in regularly and most distros provide a means for doing so. chatgpt should be able to handle this and i think this applies to most distros as well.
Damn near every distro is fiddly with Nvidia graphics, they’re practically a criminal cartel, they give Nouveau 0 support (ok fine, lately a bit, but probably not enough)
This shouldn’t be a thing of luck, if you are prepared.
No, I’m absolutely not. What desktop environment should I choose? KDE Plasma is tempting - it would be nice to use it before I install it with Arch on my main system - but I don’t need the cutting edge or much personalization. I know XFCE best but GNOME is default… GNOME’s big launcher looks great for the TV but it’s also more resource-hungry and less customizable…
I guess I’ll go with the familiar Windows-style XFCE and maybe add big remote-friendly icons later when I configure an IR receiver.
I have used gnome, plasma, and xfce and they are all fine. I prefer KDE personally but they’re all going to do what you need to do. It’s all down to personal aesthetic preference, and picking one won’t hinder you in any real way. KDE to me just looks super nice out of the box for my taste, and I like the customization.
Well, you can try a Live CD for first contact. Or even a virtual machine, with a complete install of the operating system and desktop environment, without touching your actual system.
I’ve been using Debian with the default GNOME on an old laptop and main desktop and have been very happy with it. Coming from Windows I love that it’s way simpler and I don’t need to set a million options.
But remember the thing with Linux is you’re not locked into anything - So try GNOME or XFCE for a few weeks, then if you still want something else install and switch over to another desktop environment. You could even install all these desktop environments during the Debian install itself and just keep switching every time you log in.
No luck needed, it’ll go fine. You pretty obviously have all the experience you need.
Experience? Yes, but I’m also really clumsy and impatient. Lots of things, hardware and software, broke in my hands because I wasn’t careful enough. At least there is no personal data on the system right now that I could erase.
You’ll have a hard time breaking Debian (unless you make a FrankenDebian) also FYI the Debian Installation Media has a built in Rescue environment for Debian under Advanced Options
I just made the switch from Win 10 to Bazzite Linux some two weeks ago. It worked so great that I should have done it a long time ago.
