WFH
He/him
Formerly on .world.
I’m a long time Debian user, and I switched to Fedora when 38 was released because I wanted to try something new and shiny (well, Gnome 44 mostly).
It was kind of disappointing. With Debian, I had to work to get it perfectly functional on my laptop. Fedora just… worked happily out of the box. Almost nothing to tweak.
I don’t know the nature of your problems and solutions, but be assured that the knowledge you gained will still be useful. Nowadays most distros are more similar than they are different. I successfully used Arch Wiki and Arch Forums on Debian issues, because even if they are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, their building blocks are basically the same.
This is corporate-grade stuff. That’s why only Dell, HP and Lenovo bothered certifying their laptops. They hold an oligopoly for fleet laptops.
No chance.
Imagine, you’re in a large company and buying (or more likely, leasing) several thousands laptops each year. This is corporate world, you need to minimize expense, downtime and failing that, someone to blame.
You need to have a supplier with sales, 24/7 support and logistics in your country. Who has stock available at all times is able to replace any broken piece of equipment in less than a business day. Even if you keep a small inventory at hand, this inventory needs to be replaced quickly.
Trust me, corpos never buy from small vendors. They always go to the big brands.
I can’t figure out how to setup flatpak. Everything seems to be working fine until I enter the last line in the terminal:
Assuming you’ve installed flatpak correctly (sudo apt install flatpak gnome-software-plugin-flatpak)
in a terminal, type flatpak remotes. If it lists flathub, you’re good.
Try installing a random app like flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave
It shoud work. If it doesn’t, post your logs.
I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo
This is the intended behavior and should not be changed, it’s a basic security feature. Once you’ve finished setting up you system, you shouldn’t need sudo everyday anyway, except for updating/upgrading the system.
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?
Assuming you’re using Gnome, this is easy to solve using Extensions. First if it’s not installed already on Firefox, install Gnome Shell Integration. It’ll let you manage Gnome Extensions directly from https://extensions.gnome.org/
Then, install dash-to-panel for a “windows-style” experience, or dash-to-dock for a “macos-style” experience.
After that, you can go wild on the extensions you want to use ;)
If I need to do a clean install, I’m thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I’m more familiar with the interface.
Don’t. Ubuntu will teach you nothing but the Ubuntu way. Debian is as Standard Linux as conceivable. If your only concern is the Ubuntu-style interface, configuring dash to panel to appear on the left side is all you need.
Oh yes that’s probably it, flathub doesn’t support 32 bits architectures anymore.
Why did you choose this architecture? Almost all x86 CPU architectures from the last 20 years are 64 bits, you should reinstall using the AMD64 image. This will solve a lot of issues and insure you get the most of your hardware.
Yeah it supports amd64 :)
Fun fact: AMD started out making licenced products based on of Intel’s x86 architecture, and in the early 2000s the roles were reversed when intel had to licence AMD’s 64 bits extension of this architecture.
aarch64 are for ARM processors like the one in your phone, mips64 are embedded processors most likely found in a car or a router.
From “too many damn Linux memes” to “look at my heavily modified desktop” in 72h, I’m proud of you my friend :D
Edit: removed racist term unknowingly used.
