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·
    4 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·
      4 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·
        4 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·
          22 hours 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·
      3 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.

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 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·
      4 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)