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

  • Onsotumenh ( Onsotumenh@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    17·
    10 months ago

    Just a little warning if you boot both OS from the same drive. Windows update can and will break your bootloader at one point (if not worse, tho that’s rare). Keep a Linux live or rescue stick around in case something breaks.

    • eldavi ( eldavi@lemmy.ml ) English
      5·
      10 months 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 ( ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.ml ) OP
        2·
        10 months 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 ( eldavi@lemmy.ml ) English
          1·
          10 months 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.

    • ranzispa ( ranzispa@mander.xyz ) 
      4·
      10 months ago

      Don’t be too hopeful, it will probably be the upgrade to Debian 14 in 2030. And the issue will probably be: yes, you need to change the repo and then full-upgrade.

    • NauticalNoodle ( NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ) 
      4·
      10 months ago

      I had a fair amount of issues back in the day due to debian having limited support for newer hardware with proprietary drivers. I wouldnt be surprised if that still a thing given Debian’s modus operandi.

      • furry toaster ( protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
        3·
        10 months ago

        Debian now prompts users if they want non free drivers in the installer, and the installer it self comes with them so it can boot on platforms that require it, non free drivers and firmware are also in a seperated repository to non-free and enabling them is independent, selecting non free drivers in the installer will enable the non free driver and firmware repository

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech ( ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.ml ) OP
      2·
      10 months ago

      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!

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech ( ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.ml ) OP
      7·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • Hadriscus ( Hadriscus@jlai.lu ) 
        6·
        10 months ago

        I have been using Gnome for a few weeks (because I have an issue with my tablet and Plasma works badly with it), and it’s shit. Very locked in, strange choices regarding how information is presented, waste of screen estate (topbar that sits completely unused)… Plasma was a million times better. If I didn’t have this tablet problem… anyway that’s my advice. Have fun. Debian is stable, you should be good

        • Leon ( Dojan@pawb.social ) English
          5·
          10 months ago

          I love this, because I feel the complete opposite in some regards. I love the simplicity of GNOME. There are some weird UI decisions; I much prefer to have the dock available on the desktop than to use the application switcher every time, but that’s about it. GNOME is very thematically consistent, it’s simple, and it works smoothly. It has enough customisation where the sensible defaults fall short, at least for me, but theme-wise I really like Adwaita the way it is.

          I use KDE on my laptop though, and I enjoy the tinkering with it. Feel like it’s fairly unstable though, Plasma just crashes at times when you tinker with it (though so far it’s never happened in normal usage). Design-wise it feels much too cluttered, but there’s a lot of options to play with to make things at least almost the way I’d like it.

          We’re spoiled for choice, and that’s awesome. There’s something for everyone.

          • Hadriscus ( Hadriscus@jlai.lu ) 
            2·
            10 months ago

            Yea to be frank I also love the simplicity of Gnome. I do apreciate its qualities. It’s consistent, I get that it tries to offer a streamlined experience. I find it sacrifices a lot to get there though. The lack of flexibilty (by default without extensions) wrt window/workspace management feels a bit crippling. I do appreciate the consistency. But that’s not enough for me to make up for other aspects. And for the overhanging feeling that it’s so strongly opinionated, it might just diverge from your sensibilities at some point, without warning.

            Yea, the single fact that we’re able to talk about this is a testament to the choice… 👌🏼 Pretty cool. All in all I may like Plasma better, there are true dealbreakers that make its usage impossible for me (tbc). Anyway. For now I work under Windows11. Whatever works

      • AldinTheMage ( AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network ) 
        2·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • thingsiplay ( thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 
        2·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Brickfrog ( brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

  • jaybone ( jaybone@lemmy.zip ) English
    8·
    10 months ago

    If it’s 10 year old hardware, you should be fine.

    I’ve only had problems in Debian with brand new hardware where I have to use the backport branch to get drivers (like for wifi.)

    Though mainly I use Ubuntu, where I would not have that problem. Not sure why you switched from mint.

  • hendrik ( hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ) English
    3·
    10 months ago

    Good luck! And don’t forget to add the non-free-firmware repo and maybe the other additional ones if you need them. A standard Debian comes without. And if you’re following an old tutorial, that might not cover the split between non-free and non-free-firmware which happened somewhat recently in Debian terms. Their own documentation is good and up to date, though.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech ( ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.ml ) OP
      4·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • rozodru ( rozodru@pie.andmc.ca ) English
        1·
        10 months ago

        I would suggest when you decide to give Arch a go for the first time to start out with something like CachyOS to get your legs under you so you can easily understand it. That being said Arch is painfully easy to install now thanks to Archinstall but going the CachyOS route it’ll install the packages you need and then you can understand what you do and don’t need when it comes time to install regular Arch. Otherwise you might just install Arch and then wonder why some stuff doesn’t work because you didn’t install certain packages.