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Why I adpoted Debian.

Here you can discuss every aspect of Debian. Note: not for support requests!
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Tekmon_Xonic
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Why I adpoted Debian.

#1 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

Hello everyone, I have something I would like to share with you all. That would be why I adopted Debian as my Linux Distribution of choice.

It all began when I acquired an old laptop. Which at the time ran WIndows XP. Now, despite the operating system's age. I wasn't afraid to try and reinstall Windows XP, for I knew that I could most certainly search around for compatible software to work with Windows XP. However... I ran into a stumbling block. Upon looking up the drivers on the manufacturer's website, I quickly released that there where some drivers actually missing. Two of such being the Ethernet and wi-fi drivers. I thought to myself, what's the point of going any further with WIndows XP, if I only have half a set of drivers?... That was the point where I decided it was time to look into Linux.

I did a ton of research, and have tired many Distros. I looked into Ubuntu an it's flavors, Arch LInux, OpenSuse, and even Puppy Linux. I had no idea that there where so many distributions, each and every one catering to certain needs and lifestyles. Eventually, I found my way to Debian, that's when things just started to click with me. I quickly found out that Debian can support quite a few different hardware architectures, some that I've not even heard of too. Having that level of hardware support and compatibility meant that I would have a cross platform operating system. Which would certainly be much more convenient than juggling several different Distros.

Once I did all my research, I quickly burned Debian 9.40 to a disc, and began installing it on my old laptop. I will admit, the installer was very user friendly and easy to use. It didn't take long for me to figure things out. Once it was installed, that's when my adventure, and some times misadventure began. I learned very quickly the dangers of being super user and logging in as root could be. I ended up reinstalling Debian twice, in order to fix things being broken beyond repair. But hey, that's the joy of learning, right?

After learning from my mistakes, I was finally able to sit down with Debian, and see all what the system had to offer. There's so much software and games to work with, in fact, many of my favorite programs that I already use are already available to use on Debian. such as LibreOffice, Gimp, and Audacity to name some examples. I've also found that many of the open source games that I'm familiar with also have Debian versions. However, I think the most fun I've had is with WINE, the Windows Emulator. I've tested out some old favorites. Such as Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy, and one of my favorite strategy games of all time, Heroes Of Might And Magic III. All three games run exceptionally well.

Ultimately, I have found that Debain is probably the best DIstro I have ever had the pleasure of using. I was able to breathe new life into an old Laptop, and greatly extend the life out of it. I am finding it to be an invaluable and indispensable operating system to work with. I would like to extend a huge thank you, to everyone who's worked on Debian. You allowed me to find the perfect replacement operating system for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Thank you everyone, thank you.

I hope you all really enjoyed my story, and I would like to thank anyone here who takes the time to read this. Thank you for your time. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#2 Post by cds60601 »

Nice story and probably much like many here also. If you enjoyed Debian with older hardware, just wait till you get a beefy system. You'll really love it then!
If and when that day comes, just keep in mind that there are alternative iso's that have non-free firmware you may wish to review at some point. I myself use alternate iso since my wifi is kinda of a PITA but nonetheless, keep on pluggin' away - that IS the best way to learn. Experiment the hell out of it, break it over and over again - you will be surprised how much and how fast you learn things :)


Cheers
Chris
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Tekmon_Xonic
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#3 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ cds60601

Thank you for liking the story Chris. I really appreciate it. :)

I eventually plan on installing Debian on more beefier hardware in the future. It would most likely be when Windows 7 is obsolete, or if I get my hands on a Windows XP / Vista equivalent powerhouse that doesn't support Windows 7 of newer. I tried to get OpenMW (Morrowind reimplementation) to run on the old laptop, but it ran at like 10 FPS, so it would be nice to have some beefier hardware to run some of the more demanding games, not to mention that there's steam support, so I would be really interested in working with that.

I'm also well aware of the non-free firmware. I downloaded the collection to a flash drive, and used it while installing Debian on my old laptop. It's pretty convenient actually, having all those files at my disposal. Maybe next time I install Debian, I'll burn an ISO with the non-free firmware bundled, to simplify the process.

Lol, yeah, as I said, I broke Debian twice, I'll probably break it a third time or more, but I'm learning quickly. Thankfully Debian is really easy to reinstall, so breaking my installation its only a minor inconvenience. Just need a bit of time and patience to get everything set back up. :lol:

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debiman
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#4 Post by debiman »

why can't you use win7 in a virtual machine?
Tekmon_Xonic wrote:I did a ton of research, and have tired many Distros.
i love that typo.

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#5 Post by Funkygoby »

Tekmon_Xonic wrote:Such as Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy, and one of my favorite strategy games of all time, Heroes Of Might And Magic III. All three games run exceptionally well.
Try OpenJK for an opensource JK engine. Although it is in experimental I suggest you try to compile it from github.
As for HoMM3, there is vcmi. The "problem" I see with this one is that it is not "vanilla". They added a lot of content that feels out of place in my opinion.

As for distros. I think a lot of them (debian based) makes no sense and can be boiled down to Debian+custom install script.

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#6 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ debiman

Why can't I run Windows 7 in a virtual machine? Because my old laptop is from the early 2000s, and can't even dream about running a second operating system inside of itself, lol.

As for that typo, I swore I proofread everything, I guess that one got past me, ha ha. :lol:

@ Funkygoby

I have heard about OpenJK, though I haven't really investigated it yet. Thanks for reminding me about that.

I've also tired VCMI. But for the love of god I can't get Hot Seat in that to work in VCMI like in does in vanilla HOMM3, so I've decided to wait until they can get multiplayer sorted out.

Boy you've got that right about other distros, I've had the most fun with Debian, it just works, and that's all I ask. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#7 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Tekmon_Xonic wrote:Why can't I run Windows 7 in a virtual machine? Because my old laptop is from the early 2000s, and can't even dream about running a second operating system inside of itself, lol.
You might be surprised: as long as you have enough memory then I find that Windows actually performs better under Linux & KVM than it does on the bare metal.
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#8 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ Head_on_a_Stick

I could very well be surprised. But I don't think that 2GB of RAM is enough to run Windows 7 on top of Debian. Well... maybe Windows XP could run, that's an OS that requires very little RAM to operate. Now you've got me curious, I may have to look into this. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#9 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Tekmon_Xonic wrote:I don't think that 2GB of RAM is enough to run Windows 7 on top of Debian
Yes, that would be a stretch but a simple openbox desktop in Debian only requires ~500MiB so you could give 1.5GiB to Win7, theoretically.

Guide here:

https://wiki.debian.org/KVM
deadbang

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#10 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ Head_on_a_Stick

Thank you for the link. I'll be sure to check that out. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#11 Post by cds60601 »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Tekmon_Xonic wrote:I don't think that 2GB of RAM is enough to run Windows 7 on top of Debian
Yes, that would be a stretch but a simple openbox desktop in Debian only requires ~500MiB so you could give 1.5GiB to Win7, theoretically.

Guide here:

https://wiki.debian.org/KVM
Outstanding! This is my next project and thanks again, HoaS for the heads-up on the link.
As to not hijack this thread, I have started a new thread titled "Choosing a virtualization method." for my questions on this.

Cheers
Chris
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#12 Post by None1975 »

Very nice story. I wish you good luck with your new friend- Debian.
OS: Debian 12.4 Bookworm / DE: Enlightenment
Debian Wiki | DontBreakDebian, My config files on github

Tekmon_Xonic
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#13 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ None1975

Thank you very much for your kind words. I am most certainly looking forward to getting the most out of my time with Debian. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#14 Post by Lysander »

Tekmon_Xonic wrote: Lol, yeah, as I said, I broke Debian twice, I'll probably break it a third time or more, but I'm learning quickly. Thankfully Debian is really easy to reinstall, so breaking my installation its only a minor inconvenience. Just need a bit of time and patience to get everything set back up. :lol:
Breaking your installation, especially [and hopefully only] when one is learning Linux is completely normal and to be expected. I broke Ubuntu twice on the first day I installed it. I can't remember breaking Debian, but I certainly broke Slackware a few times, on bare metal and VMs.

It may be worth considering setting up three partitions for root [/], /home and /swap if you haven't already. Therefore if you break your install in /, you can just reinstall the OS and your home folder will be where you left it.

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#15 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ Lysander

Well its nice to know that breaking linux is part of the learning process. Thankfully, I'm learning from my mistakes, so there's no worries there.

As for setting up multiple partitions, that's a really good suggestion. It would be nice to have my home folder on a separate partition, in the even of total destruction. That way, everything will be right where I left it. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#16 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Tekmon_Xonic wrote:It would be nice to have my home folder on a separate partition, in the even of total destruction. That way, everything will be right where I left it. :)
The single most important thing for any GNU/Linux user to have is a working backup strategy: then you won't have to keep re-installing ;)
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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#17 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ Head_on_a_Stick

Agreed! Having a backup plan will mean I'll be prepared for any situation gone south. I think On my next installation, I'll learn how to setup different partitions. 8)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#18 Post by CwF »

For my newguy #2 post, this is where. I adopted Debian for the same reason, an XP replacement, but it didn't end up that way. I started on 8.1 and I did break it within a week. I started over and went through Xubuntu for months as I learned KVM. On that install I had learned enough to fix that broken 8.1. That eventually kicked out Xubuntu and is now ~9.3. I built a very capable 5600 Xeon, now a faster E5 and Debian is now a host for many Debian VM's and 2 XP VM's. With passed hardware it really is beyond bare metal capabilities in many ways. The mothership machine has two heads for the host and VM's and two heads passed to XP Pro. All unified nicely.

I ultimately went Debian since it did seem to be a foundational distro. I don't like chasing things more than I have to. After exploring many distros and too many programs I've stopped trying to replace anything XP does well with a Linux equivalent. So my XP's do nearly everything that can be done offline. For the most part VM's do everything online, namely stripped Debians with Firefox. I've stopped looking for the perfect browser too. I do have a few experimental Debian VM to look at new software and one that runs liferea and handbrake. Overall, in this role debian has been exceptionally stable, and is better the simpler I keep it.

I maintain my own local pool and let nothing update. I see no advantage to rolling breakage. I'm lucky to have many computers, so I only update the mothership every 6 months or so. With a bare metal current state and also vm's in various stages it's easier to track issues. I found qemu-img to be a perfect way to back up. I keep OS images small and tidy, use full disk encrypted LVM for hypervisor images and single partition OS images for VM. I use a few qcow layers and refresh the top layer as needed, and redo the backing files when worth it.

For a user like me Debian is perfect. Well vetted packages in the repositories that are a few updates behind is fine, just get it right. I'm tired of reinventing the wheel. I do think XP was the best wheel ever and if you look hard you can use it up to X99 chipsets in my experience. Finding the proper inf files isn't obvious and most vendors don't show support for things that actually does exist, likely a contract thing. Awhile back I found some info and built a xp install for a 5520 chipset machine and XP came up with no exclamations, dual sockets, 8 cores, sata and usb3 all working fine, but the vm on the same machine is almost as good. I do have one stump, I have failed to run SimCity4 in a KVM based vm = no mouse?

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#19 Post by Tekmon_Xonic »

@ CwF

It would seem you and I have shared a similar journey in our search for the perfect Linux Distro, and have shared similar experiences. I will admit, my first experience with Linux wasn't a pleasant one. I picked Ubuntu as my first distribution, only to find that it's designed for running on modern hardware, so performance was less than desired. As for the rest of the Distros. I would typically have complications with installations, not liking how the Distro operates, and, at worst, not even being able to log in or use the Distro.

See, that's why Debian is so awesome. It just works, often right out of the box. The only minor bump in the road I had to get over was either installing non-free firmware through a flash drive, or downloading non-free firmware from the package manger. I even installed Debian on one of my Windows XP based netbooks, and I find that it performs surprisingly well with 1GB of RAM and a 1.6 GHZ single core processor. I was even able to get some of my old games running on it through wine. Including Jedi Academy / Outcast. Of which ran at very playable frame rates. 20 FPS on average, with very responsive controls.

As for Windows XP, yeah, it's my favorite Windows Version as well. I grew up using Windows XP, and I've found it to probably be Microsoft's best operating system. It was so simplistic, and just worked. Personally, I think the only operating system that comes close to XP was Windows 7. Which usually just works too. *Researches the X99 Chipset* Wow! I didn't know that XP was capable of supporting such a mother board, with Core i7 compatability! That's amazing!

Well I wish you luck in your future endeavors with Debian. Hopefully your good experiences will continue, and that you'll enjoy it as much as I do. :)

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Re: Why I adpoted Debian.

#20 Post by CwF »

@ Tekmon_Xonic

Thank you, and fortunes in your journey as well.
On the XP, currently not used but sitting in reserve I have a Q67 chipset modded to a E3 xeon that runs great but the clock is locked for some reason and I need to manually step it where I want, I gave up, but it would run an i7-2xxx and HD3000 video perfectly. On a X8D-TH supermicro I tested a few years back and took notes. I ran across something in random that had some hardware id's that rang a bell and I took notes. Months later the notes crossed, I got a damaged MB and "fixed" it to be a single socket, bypassing damage, made an XP Pro install image with the new info, the QP Link or something, one exclamation instance per core was correctly id'ed and the install came up clean, clocks correctly, and is the smoothest XP I've ever used. 99% of XP time I'm in the vm, and for passing video quadros work fantastic. I think a hardware assisted VM on a X10 or X11 level supermicro will eclipse what is possible on bare metal. I intend to be on my X9 for years or until I win the lottery. The Q67 will run SC4 marathons a few times a year, until the aliens blow up the city.

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