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

  • AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network
    21·
    6 days ago

    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.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      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.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        6 days ago

        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?

        • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          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.

    • ohshit604@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Some specific drivers are a little fiddly if you have nvidia graphics

      Nit-picking here but Nvidia drivers for Debian are ridiculously easy to install? Doc page

      • Prerequisites
      deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ trixie-security contrib non-free main non-free-firmware
sudo apt update
      • Install the driver (Trixie)
      sudo apt install nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver
      • Have an RTX capable GPU?
      sudo apt install libnvoptix1

      Edit: For an Nvidia Optimus Laptop just install envycontrol and set your Nvidia GPU as your primary GPU.

      sudo envycontrol -s nvidia --force-comp --coolbits 24

      Done, easy peasy.

      • AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network
        1·
        13 hours ago

        I have an older nvidia card (1070) and had more of an issue than that getting the correct version of the driver installed for my card, and getting it to use the correct driver instead of the open source one that didn’t work well. It’s also possible I was doing something wrong. But yeah, it’s definitely doable, and it’s not too bad, but it’s fiddly compared to the ubuntu driver gui or something like bazzite that works out of the box with it.

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      5 days ago

      I just wish Debian didn’t use apt. Got fuck I hate apt. With a fucking passion. FUCK APT.

      But I do love Debian it’s always been the most reliable thing ever.

    • dorkofeverything@lemmy.ml
      1·
      5 days ago

      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)