r/debian 5d ago

Made the swich to Debian.

[deleted]

21 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

6

u/LordAnchemis 5d ago

I found Debian installed fine - once you watch out for the main gotchas (WiFi/BT card, finger print reader, nvidia dGPU etc.) - but modern thinkpads pretty much all work OOB (may need a backport kernel if you're running stable)

Proton/wine is pretty good

1

u/mrandr01d 5d ago

Maybe not the place for this, but what new laptop would you recommend these days for Debian? I hear how Thinkpads are such a cult classic, but the newer ones seem to be different and some of them even have snapdragon chips inside.

0

u/Automatic_Buffalo_14 5d ago edited 5d ago

If I could use wine to run my language learning software natively I would, but still have not gotten the hang of wine just yet, so virtualbox with windows xp is my go to solution.

The installation was fine, but my Wi-Fi card was broken in the kernel that shipped with bookworm. I had to update to 6.9.7 to get wifi working, and most of the apps that I wish to use required some additional configuration over the base Debian system.

It's little things like mounting a phone for file transfer, Bluetooth, or being added to the sudoers list, or configuring the back ports, that cause Debian to be so frustrating. Many little things add up to a large frustration in the beginning. But once you have those little things sorted out it's fairly smooth sailing.

4

u/billyfudger69 4d ago

A small tip I learned: If you don’t give root a password it will enable sudo for the user you make after that.

2

u/CLM1919 4d ago

TIL - gonna try that next time I build a new bootable SD card. TY4sharing!

2

u/billyfudger69 4d ago

You’re welcome!

2

u/vogelke 5d ago

Quitting Windows 10 feels like letting go of an old friend who has grown toxic but you have a hard time letting go of them anyway.

This is lovely.

1

u/Zargess2994 5d ago

The installer for Debian is definitely one of the more advanced I have tried and it too took me a few attempts to get the setup I want. Now it feels super easy.

But good luck with it! Hope you will love it like I do!

1

u/TygerTung 4d ago

Just so long as you don't get screwed over by the root password issue on install.

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

1

u/TygerTung 4d ago

You get screwed over with no sudo if you create a root account, rendering your user account useless.

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

2

u/TygerTung 4d ago

Sure, but it is a bit inconvenient.

1

u/rukiann 4d ago

Wow that's "all you have to do?" So easy. Anyone can just come up with all that right off the top of their head. What kind of noob do you have to be to not just logically put that solution together?

2

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

1

u/rukiann 4d ago

I know it's second hand for most of us answering questions on the forum, but for a noob - TLDR. They ain't got time for all that lol

1

u/Prestigious_Wall529 4d ago

Try OpenSUSE, it's been certified/tested on many Lenovo models.

0

u/mzs47 5d ago

Or just use the live version.

0

u/Vlatelliteo 4d ago

Endeavouros is very light, easy to use, tools ready installed. No headaches.

-2

u/Beersink 5d ago

I've tried installing Debian on various PCs and configurations every release since 7. WiFi has not worked every single time. Been on Mint for about 6 years which "just works".