tl;dr Staying on Debian Stable

So it's been an interesting summer of experiment. I've been on #Debian Stable for ages and loved it from the beginning. I've dabbled for the first time this summer in #Fedora (easiest and safest #AsahiLinux install on a discarded Macbook). And I finally got time (and lots of help! thanks!) to try out #Guix #GuixSystem as a distro.

Impressed with Fedora, rock solid. As a GNOME user it would take awhile to notice it wasn't Debian. I bet people alias apt=dnf. But it made me realize: the update pace on Fedora vexed me.

Debian "Stable" doesn't mean Debian doesn't crash. Debian Stable means Debian doesn't CHANGE.

And when I finally got my caveman skull (partially, crudely) around the Guix/Nix paradigm, I realized it was just Arch with extra steps. I yearn for the mathematical formality of a declarative Lispy config. It may not have been worth the extra complexity and learning curve, but it definitely was not worth leaving the Stable lifestyle. I do love to tinker, but I love to have a simple familiar boring system. I guess more.

What drew me to Guix in the first place was the promise of reproducible portability: it is very important that the Stack of Laptops all behave the same. But I have in fact enjoyed this very thing for years, with a bash script. If you've read this far, could you just validate me here? Tell me you approve of my imperative setup? 😆

Just got my new work laptop!

But Panther Lake support in #Debian 13 (Trixie) is problematic - WiFi, sound, and accelerated graphics don't work.

For anyone else struggling, here's what worked for me:

1. With an ethernet dongle, enable trixie-backports and then:

apt install -t trixie-backports \
linux-image-7.0.12+deb13-amd64 \
firmware-intel-graphics \
firmware-intel-iwlwifi \
firmware-intel-misc

2. Important! To fix the screen freezing when starting GDM/Gnome/Mutter, add this to /etc/environment:

INTEL_FORCE_PROBE=b0a0

3. Reboot

No sound though

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

@Aethel @jwildeboer I for one use #PiVPN a lot, but I also have #Debian and #Linux administration skills, and run these on my own VPS'.

PiVPN (and #Wireguard) is software, is not a business per se. I subscribe to a VPN service which I provide to myself.
Serious geek skills allow for this.

**The point being: If people want to divorce and indemnify themselves from underlying politics of any provider, this is how at least one "middleman" is eliminated, IMHO.** If one feels like one can't trust any VPN provider, then at the end of the day, one needs to learn more #SelfHosting skills.

There needs to be some trust, somewhere.

It's funny that I've often complained about #Debian being long in the tooth, but now I'm kinda considering sticking with #Trixie until 2030-06-30 (end of #LTS).

...becase it's relatively #slop-free, at least in "base."

#NoAI #AInt

Welp, I've hit a snag. The installer doesn't seem to be talking to to the wifi card. The laptop has no ethernet port. I have a USB to ethernet adapter, but the laptop has only one USB-A port (and a USB micro port, weirdly?). The USB port is occupied by the flash drive with the installer. I've tried using a USB hub to make more ports available, but then the system can't see the flash drive.

I'm at a loss.

#Debian

Trying to install #Debian on another machine, but #Windows is being stubborn. I accidentally let it boot into Windows 10 and now it's insisting on installing updates before it reboots. Holding the power button to force a shutdown appears to have been disabled somehow.

Fine, whatever. It's not like I have anything else to do tonight.

More a note for myself but feel free to use this:

To add fan speeds to node exporter on Debian on a dell Optiplex:

- make file /etc/modprobe.d/dell-smm-hwmon.conf with "options dell-smm-hwmon ignore_dmi=1"
- run modprobe dell-smm-hwmon
- try sensors
- try sensors-detect and sensors again
- try reboot
- one of those may have worked?

Again this is a mix of about 5 different articles but it seems to add hardware fan speed to node exporter soooo

#dell #debian

My experience of KDE with plamsa 6 on Debian Trixie is that it is a bit crashy.
Do I need to remove old config files from the last 20 years of kde upgrades?

#Debian #Linux #KDE

Following on from a recent conversation with @rl_dane about running Joy+Horton #vi in one of its three (sic!) 'open' modes on a paper terminal:

I decided to see whether any modern #termcap or #terminfo database actually had any settings anywhere for switching dot matrix printers between near-letter, draft, and letter quality modes.

#Illumos, #OpenBSD, #Debian, and #NetBSD all use the Dickey terminfo.src. #FreeBSD is the only one maintaining a different database. It is still maintaining the old BSD termcap file, in 2026.

Neither of the databases have sdrfq/snlq/snrmq or ZG/ZL/ZK capabilities in any record.

This stuff exists solely as words on a manual page (and reprints of the same in various books) and a single Usenet post by Oliver Okrongli in 1994. It's not even in the O'Reilly termcap+terminfo book.

We should prune such stuff that apparently has never really existed.

#retrocomputing #Unix

Building a immich only box thinking of going debian and btrfs any other ideas or tips?

It's a 8th gen nuc

Tia

#selfhosting #immich #server #debian

It's a pretty good n00b distro, honestly.

But #Debian has the same problem, even moreso as even the grub font is tiny.

rld@Intrepid:~$ pkg search -i sysstat
libsysstat-0.4.6               Library used to query system info and statistics
libsysstat-qt6-1.1.0_3         Library used to query system info and statistics ported to qt6
xsysstats-1.51_6               System information display tool
rld@Intrepid:~$ 

hey #docker oficionados.

Have been googling (DuckDuckGoing?) on if there is a way that Docker can spit out the command with which a container was started?

This is essentially faster than scrolling back through my terminal history.

#Linux #Debian #mastoAdmin

Can someone please point me to a USB #speakerphone for the desk, that works well with #Linux (#Debian stable)?

We have a #Jabra Speak 510 and it works… occasionally… I need something that just works, always.

It's for conference calls with remote participants via #BBB or #Dino, btw.

Thanks in advance!

#help #question #lazyverse

I think I’m going to set up #Debian now. I have a huge problem with some packages conflicting and refusing to build on Arch, hindering the system update. Not cool and will take too much time to resolve for something that shouldn’t’ve even happened. I need a really boring system to base things off, as I care about software and ideas (and ed(1),) and not about drivers and systemd whatever. I just want something that is guaranteed to stay out of my way. So yeah, it’s a values decision.

I am also considering #Guix, but the stance on non-free software and the dire gaming situation is somewhat disincentivizing. No systemd and lack of slop though. Can I install Shepherd on Debian? Is Devuan a good distro? Is SysV too vaporwave with kids these days?

#Plan9 sounds fun too, especially for running in a container on a more secure system.

[$] Trying to make sense of package-manager metadata

Package managers for operating systems and programming languages have been around for decades. Each package manager, and its accompanying packaging format, has been shaped by the n [...]

lwn.net/Articles/1074908/ #LWN #Linux #Debian #Python #Perl #OSS

If anyone was wanting a way out from #Discord, and other similar closed-source forums, #Flarum will soon be having their 2.0 release. rc3 just came out. They have good developer and bugfixing momentum right now. If you have Sysadmin skills, and know of an #OpenSource community in need of a new and suitable OpenSource forum, maybe warm up a VPS, and/or register a domain? And perhaps try out their RC on a testing rig first.

Now is a good time to get into flarum, I say. I've been watching them for a long time, and have done multiple #Debian installs myself.

Note: Flarum doesn't do team voice chat, unlike Discord. But it's a great web forum, with good mobile support (unlike #PHPBB) . Is also lightweight (unlike #Discourse) - can be run on a cheap VPS or Raspberry Pi.

Flarum's 2.0 RC3 announcement:
discuss.flarum.org/d/39406-fla…

#datasovereignty #SelfHosting

Yesterday I updated my #Debian testing laptop and got this message:

> Since GNOME 50, X11-style middle-click paste (pasting the primary
selection, usually activated by a middle mouse button click) is disabled
by default, because it was often done accidentally by users who did
not expect it.

So instead of teaching a great function (that I was able to grasp in 30s in my first fvwm2 session), #gnome dumbs down to the dumbest available user. I think that's the wrong way for #gnome, #linux and life in general.

Mein Lüfterproblem (ständig Vollspeed, dementsprechend laut) habe ich jetzt endlich folgendermaßen in den Griff bekommen:

1. #Thinkfan installieren: apt install thinkfan
2. Eine Config Datei für thinkfan erstellen: nano /etc/thinkfan.yaml
3. Folgende Konfiguration für diese Datei:
   

   fans:
     - tpacpi: /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
   
   sensors:
     - hwmon: /sys/class/hwmon
       name: coretemp
       indices: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]   # Package id 0 + Core 0–3
   
     - hwmon: /sys/class/hwmon
       name: nvme
       indices: [1]                # NVMe Composite
   
   #              Stufe  min°C  max°C
   levels:
     - [0,          0,    50]    # Lüfter aus
     - [1,         46,    57]    # kaum hörbar
     - [2,         54,    64]    # sehr leise
     - [4,         61,    71]    # moderat
     - [6,         68,    80]    # schnell
     - ["level auto", 77, 32767] # BIOS übernimmt ab 77°C

4. Mit sudo thinkfan -n testen, ob thinkfan tut, was es machen soll.
5. Nachdem der Test erfolgreich gelaufen ist, thinkfan dauerhaft aktiviert:
   

   sudo systemctl enable --now thinkfan
   sudo systemctl status thinkfan

Damit kann ich meinen #Lenovo #Thinkpad #T14 jetzt komplett geräuscharm nutzen.

#Linux #Debian

So I have an older netbook-esque laptop currently running Windows 10, and I'm sure it's not upgradeable. I've toyed with the idea of slapping #Debian on it to give it new life, but I've also been thinking about giving #BSD a go. Were I to do the latter, which BSD would the fedi recommend for an underpowered machine?

CC: @silverwizard

Interesting post. I would like to see a more in-depth objective review of package manager comparisons.

Sure, speed is great but highly subjective - what if the nearest mirror is several states away or located in a different country altogether?

Some of the ones I'd like to see are:

1.) Number of available packages a distro offers in its default repos.

2.) Package manager features. Can updates be rolled back (not just removed)? How frequently are packages updated? etc.

3.) Ease of configuring your own local mirror.

A note about #Homebrew:

I use it on my #Mac and it's worked flawlessly there for the past six years. But out of curiosity, when I tried it on #Debian, I had weird persistence issues after rebooting the machine. For example Homebrew itself would require reinstallation after reboots and any packages I installed just *disappeared* and needed to be reinstalled too.

New #blog #post: Package Manager Tier List

rldane.space/package-manager-t…

1521 words

Note: this is a very off-the-cuff tier list, using speed as the main qualifier, but the article explains exceptions to that as it goes on.

cc: my wonderful #chorus: @joel @dm @sotolf @thedoctor @pixx @orbitalmartian @adamsdesk @krafter @roguefoam @clayton @giantspacesquid @Twizzay @stfn

(I will happily add/remove you from the chorus upon request! 😀

#rlDaneWriting #blost #DeadLikeMe #Linux #BSD #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Debian #Arch #pacman #AUR #Fedora #homebrew #flatpak #snap #OpenSuSE #RPM

Just finished upgrading #Debian to #trixie on 1 of 3 of my machines. Only one thing broke, and fixing it is a low priority.

That said, I did this machine first because I expected it to be the easiest to upgrade and the least of a problem if it broke.

I would like thank past me for choosing Debian for my servers 😌

#IndieDev #Debian #Linux

#Debian or #Trisquel #GNU / #Linux users, do you use the #Emacs package of your distribution, or do you build Emacs from source?

#AskFedi