I got an old Windows 7 laptop that was going to be thrown out and decided to put Linux on it (see previous thread here). Most people suggested I go with the latest stable version of Debian, so that's what I installed. I've mostly used Windows, but I do have some experience with Ubuntu.
The installation went smoothly, but I've had a few problems getting it set up to my liking:
- I can't figure out how to setup flatpak. Everything seems to be working fine until I enter the last line in the terminal:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
I hit enter and nothing happens. No error message or anything. I restarted the computer but flatpak doesn't work, either through the software center or the flatpak website. I found a few forum posts with the same problem, but no solutions.
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I somehow set it up so that my username is not the super user, so I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo. Is there a way to fix this without a clean install?
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I somehow set up the hard drive partitions so that the OS is on an encrypted partition, so I have to put in a password for the BIOS to boot up. Is there a way to fix this without a clean install?
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I'm used to a desktop interface with a toolbar/start menu that I can pin frequently-used programs to, but with Debian it seems like I need to click "Activities" to do anything. Is there a way to set up the interface so it's more like Windows in that regard?
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If I need to do a clean install, I'm thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I'm more familiar with the interface. Is there any reason why I should stick with Debian? I've heard some people trashing Ubuntu but I'm not sure why. Is Debian better for older hardware?
Edit: Thanks for all the knowledgeable replies. For reference, this is a Dell XPS M1530 running the 32 bit version of Debian 12 and Gnome.
for 1, in linux no output is often indicitive of no problem. To verify if your previous command exited successfully, type 'echo $?' at the command line and if its anything but 0 its an error.
For 3, I do the same but since I'm the only user I auto login so its still just one password to enter to get to a desktop.
How do you setup the auto login?
Depends if you're using a graphical login manager or not. If so, you'll have to search the name of it and 'autologin' in your favourite search engine. Its typically no more then checking a box and adding your username.
I dont use a graphical login manager, I just let it boot up and agetty (from util-linux) logs me directly into my shell (because I added -u ' to the config.). Then my shell profile takes care of starting the graphical environment for me.
Its just personal choice but I dont see any point in a login manager when Im the only one logging in. I understand that it may come as part of the desktop suite though. I prefer to start with nothing and add what I want versus getting everything and removing what I dont want