Thinking of trying out Debian

[vinnywright]

I have strange problems with 14.04, through it's updates it has aqcuired the same video problems that plague 15.10 and to a lesser extend 16.04.

The problems are mainly around cold booting into a black screen and the panel insisting on displaying on the wrong monitor.
Over the past 4 years this never happened on this Thinkpad until about end of last year.

?,,,,,,,I have never had this problem myself on any of those ,,,14.04 , 15.10 0r 16.04 with this hardware

vinny@debian:~$ inxi -Fz
System:    Host: debian Kernel: 3.16.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: KDE 4.14.2 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 8 
Machine:   Mobo: System76 model: Bonobo Extreme v: bonx8 Bios: American Megatrends v: 4.6.5 date: 04/15/2014
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-4910MQ (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 3764 MHz 2: 3771 MHz 3: 3723 MHz 4: 3793 MHz 5: 3760 MHz 6: 3755 MHz 7: 3709 MHz
           8: 3550 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GK104M [GeForce GTX 860M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1080@60.01hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 860M/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.96
Audio:     Card-1 Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Card-2 NVIDIA GK104 HDMI Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.16.0-4-amd64
Network:   Card-1: Intel Wireless 3160 driver: iwlwifi
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1500.3GB (31.2% used) ID-1: /dev/sdb model: HGST_HTS721010A9 size: 1000.2GB
           ID-2: /dev/sda model: HGST_HTS725050A7 size: 500.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 55G used: 12G (22%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 4.29GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 52.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 53C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
Info:      Processes: 272 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 1805.0/16034.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28

ya ,,,,I'm booted to the Debian install at the moment.

Otherwise, KDE4 has a lot more to offer as plasmoids, so far very few have been ported to Plasma5.

,,,,,,,,,and I would half to concur with that

VINNY

[Teunis]

I have strange problems with 14.04, through it's updates it has aqcuired the same video problems that plague 15.10 and to a lesser extend 16.04.

The problems are mainly around cold booting into a black screen and the panel insisting on displaying on the wrong monitor.
Over the past 4 years this never happened on this Thinkpad until about end of last year.

Otherwise, KDE4 has a lot more to offer as plasmoids, so far very few have been ported to Plasma5.

[vinnywright]

14.04 LTS will be supported for a long time. I plan on checking out 16.04.1 when it comes out, but I have no problem running 14.04 on my main rig for a long time to come. KDE 4 is just fine, KDE-PIM aside.

... I have 14.04 and a 15.10 that was "do-release-upgrade -d" ed to 16.04 on this box as well

VINNY

[dequire]

14.04 LTS will be supported for a long time. I plan on checking out 16.04.1 when it comes out, but I have no problem running 14.04 on my main rig for a long time to come. KDE 4 is just fine, KDE-PIM aside.

[GreyGeek]

Debian-8-KDE ,,,, ya KDE 4

@GG I do not see a mix of plasma4 and 5 hear and this is vary stable ,,,,,,,, perhaps you had added unstable to your sources ?

VINNY

Same release level as the one I tried out? It had problems with the qtchooser app not working properly. When I tried Arch I found plasma5 very fast and sttable. But, as I wrote, the more I used it the less I liked it. I need a better set of eyeballs to use P5.

[woodsmoke]

Both of youse guys are such kewl coders!

woodsmoke

[vinnywright]

Debian-8-KDE ,,,, ya KDE 4



@GG I do not see a mix of plasma4 and 5 hear and this is vary stable ,,,,,,,, perhaps you had added unstable to your sources ?

VINNY

[dibl]

Here you go == I dunno whether it looks like KDE 4 or not. You can decide.

[woodsmoke]

nice post dlbl

woodsmoke

[dibl]

It's been 6 months since I saw a KDE 4 desktop so the details are fading, but .... For Plasma 5 I like the oxygen desktop theme, oxygen widgets, oxygen team icons, oxygen widget style, air-oxygen-color window decorations, and clearlooks/adwaita for the few gtk2/3 apps that I use, with oxygen icons for gtk apps, on 4 virtual desktops. It doesn't look terribly different than how I remember KDE 4 looking.

[GreyGeek]

Jumping to Debian is a jump to the mother-ship. I tried Debian Jessie KDE. It wasn't stable because they were mixing Plasma4 and Plasma5 stuff without testing. Things like "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" would bork the DE. Since Debian KDE is moving to Plasma5 I took it off my goto list and uninstalled it as a guest OS.
I've been using KDE since the 1.0 beta on SuSE 5.3 in September of 1998. Sadly, unless the KDE dev crew can create a theme which mimics Plasma4, or makes it an option during the install, I will probably be moving to Mint's Cinnamon.

[dibl]

... there may be repos that you need to add, you will certainly need to add codecs, etc, might have to go through the printer setup to install printers.

... the important thing is that it is all debs and you can use synaptic.

For unstable, it is advisable to stay with apt and do installations and updates at the run level formerly known as "init 3", now known as "multi-user.target". For testing and stable, using synaptic in X is fine.

I use only three repos for normal daily work:

1. Debian unstable:

# debian loadbalancer
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

2. Siduction:

# official siduction-lists

deb http://mirror.lug.udel.edu/pub/siduction/extra unstable main
#deb-src http://packages.siduction.org/extra unstable main

deb http://mirror.lug.udel.edu/pub/siduction/fixes unstable main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://packages.siduction.org/fixes unstable main contrib non-free

3. Debian multimedia:

# debian dmo list
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org sid main non-free
#deb-src ftp://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/debian-multimedia/ unstable main

Most of the proprietary firmware for wifi is in the debian non-free repos -- there's an extensive wiki about that here.

If you want the native firefox rather than iceweasel, there's a nightly builds repo that some folks use -- I don't. Besides I read last week that Mozilla has agreed to let Debian use their brand so that issue is going obsolete.

Once in a great while (hasn't happened lately) the version numbering of packages in the DMO repo gets out of sequence with the same packages in unstable and causes a problem in which you have to comment out DMO and wait a bit before upgrading, but that is easily done.

Hplip works just fine for installing and supporting HP printers, including those like my P1606dn that need a downloaded plugin.

[woodsmoke]

To me there is not a "problem" with Debian, I've installed it with KDE and commented that it did not "feel" right and had others say that "Kubuntu is just Debian with KDE" but still aver.

It works great, etc., but there may be repos that you need to add, you will certainly need to add codecs, etc, might have to go through the printer setup to install printers.

VERY security conscious in terms of passwords and KDEwallet type things...

But otherwise the important thing is that it is all debs and you can use synaptic.

woodsmoke

[dibl]

You can try plasma 5 by installing Debian testing or unstable. I run unstable, via siduction. But it can be a little, ummm .... unstable, at times, although it is pretty solid at the moment. Plasma 5 has come a long way since its early version, and is approaching a usability level similar to KDE 4. I'd say, give siduction a try, see if you can tolerate the occasional challenge, and if that's too much for you, you can always drop back to testing.

[Cecil]

I am not sure ,,,I am no Debian guru ,,,,,,,but I think sid ,,,(unstable) has it ,,,,,but not sure

@dibl would know however ,,,,,,,,or google it .

yes it is plasma4,,,,,,,,Debian-8-KDE that is

VINNY

Yeah, did some looking, and I'm going to install it on my laptop (which isn't my main machine) and upgrade to Debian-Testing to check it out. I'll likely stick with Kubuntu for my main desktop, though, I'm just still in my "Lets see what this has to offer" phase.