I know what archinstall does but why did you say “painfully”?

See my newest comment with the monospaced text.

But yeah, not a real issue, I fixed it in 15 minutes. Apparently it was foolish of me to want Num Lock on the lock screen (Czech keyboard layout uses the number row for diacritics).

Edit: Now I fixed that too. I can easily use numbers in my password now!

Guess what, you’re right! Technically, it does boot but

Debian GNU/Linux 13 mmpc tty1

mmpc login: _

does not bring joy.

Also, why is the fan spinning? I’ve been on this screen for minutes while looking up lightdm troubleeshooting on my phone. Blinking the cursor and Linux backend stuff can’t be too CPU-intensive, right?

Edit: fixed. I had broken lightdm by adding the numlockx on script in the wrong place, too eager to get a lock screen with an enabled Num Lock

Mmm… Let’s reboot and see how fast the new SSD made things! It can’t be worse than 60 seconds with Mint (or 300 seconds with Windows) on the HDD!

*chuckles* I’m in danger!

Debian GNU/Linux 13 mmpc tty1

mmpc login: _

Edit: fixed. I had broken lightdm by adding the numlockx on script in the wrong place, too eager to get a lock screen with an enabled Num Lock

And the boot time is 20 seconds, on par with Windows somehow.‌

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?

Why is archinstall “painfully” easy? Do you think its users will do badly at troubleshooting because they didn’t go through a setup process that teaches more about the system?

I haven’t restarted it since but it has brought joy. It’s not pretty but way less setup hassle than Windows if you want it at least somewhat privacy-respecting. And even default XFCE beats Windows 11 on looks and practicality.

I have worked with VMs before and still use an XP one sometimes. But modern Windows in a VM on an old laptop with 4 GB of RAM? I’ll pass…

I mean, the good old dumb 32" LCD TV should be the primary screen. But maybe mom will want to watch in another room sometimes, in which case she can pull out the laptop and use her familiar IPTV client.

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.

Yeah, I know this, what a pain… I eventually had to install rEFInd on one of the PCs with dual boot.

Raspberry Pi is expensive and does not come with a UPS. I already have this mediocre laptop. The Pi cost may recoup itself on the electricity bill but I’m not happy about booting from an SD card.

The only lid problem is that the BIOS of this laptop does not allow turning on with the lid closed (also, there is no Power-on-AC) but I might hack it with a magnet.

I’ll be installing Arch on my main laptop when I make the disk space and get the motivation (my mental state is almost as messy as the drive). I’ll also take the opportunity to reinstall Windows because it’s an old copy where I chose my real name as the user directory name (I didn’t know better back then), with a space and diacritics, which broke lots of things. But this is a server and I preferred Mint to Manjaro so Debian it is.

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.