I tried Debian and...

I am still a beginner in Linux and before I just tried some easy distros, like mint and Ubuntu.

Now I installed Debian and tried it on a hp laptop I got before 12 years or something, It wasn't hard that much to install, I didn't need to read documents to know what to do I just used Ai to know how and why to do things, it helped me to use this laptop again without lagging, and with choosing lxqt as a desktop environment i can prefer to use it than my windows laptop i got before 3 years or less. If you have any advice for linux at general or Debian specifically I enjoy to know more .

22 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

u/Salt_Ad9828 1d ago

Try out zram if your laptop doesn't have much ram. Will help

15

u/Z_Perm_Coder-ggg 1d ago

Sorry, but what is zram?

20

u/emeraldbruhh3 1d ago

people downvoting OP for asking a simple question is why the linux community is constantly considered extremely toxic. we will never beat windows and mac if the community is this insufferable.

3

u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not a downvoter here, but:

Some people don't want to beat anything. The "free" in "free software" can also extend to freedom of choice for the user; no need to play missionary to improve some metric and/or some ego. Tolerance and so, you know.

And more users can be a disadvantage. More targetted by malware, enshittified commercial things, surveillance laws, ...

plus users that call others "insufferable" and "extremely toxic", just because latter are fed up with spending their free time to support extreme laziness. You know, someone getting a lot of software and moderate support for free, but never contributes anything except insults and entitledness, isn't a shining angel themselves (and I'm not talking about one specific person here, but there are plenty such users)

5

u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Debian Stable 1d ago

Something we used before zswap. Configure zswap instead. If you look up the debian wiki on zswap you'll find a link to an article explaining both.

It's a good idea to configure it but not the end of the world if you don't.

zram might still be useful in embedded systems but very unlikely to be a good idea for a desktop.

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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago

I didn't need to read documents to know what to do I just used Ai

Sorry, but what is zram?

Now that you've installed Debian, I recommend taking the time to understand what you're actually doing.

6

u/Z_Perm_Coder-ggg 1d ago

Where can I learn more about linux?can u give me a good resource to start with for a beginner ?

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u/Callidonaut 1d ago

As of this moment, the "man" command is your best friend. Brings up instruction manuals for any other command or program on the system. For more information, obviously, type "man man"

Also read this and this. That should give you a solid foundation.

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u/m0hka 18h ago

its not written in enough places, and many modern softwares deviate from it, but the simple idea was that every program would operate within certain standards, such that all the programs would be interoperable.
$program <options> input output.

What a good resource is might depend on what your objectives are. I mess with arts, and device communications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
The FHS tells you where everything is, or at least where it should be.

1

u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago

For a start, take anything you couldn't do / didn't understand without AI until now, and use a search engine (but not Googles AI answers).

You'll find various other Q&A and/or documentation, that you can read, and likely it will resolve one question but add some new ones in return.

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u/Z_Perm_Coder-ggg 1d ago

Thanks

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u/MrBiscotte 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is totally fine to use AI, however you need to ask the model to explain the commands, why it recommands you to do something, what are the pro/cons and if there is alternatives. Basically you need to prompt the model to teach you.

As for ZRam it is a block of ram that is compressed in memory, through compression it virtually give you more ram, however it comes at a price of CPU cycles to compress/decompress the data when needed. I myself prefers Zswap that I found easier to setup and handle ram exhaustion better but does more writes to your SSD.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Zswap#Differences_between_zswap_and_zram_based_swap

0

u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago

This is totally fine to use AI, however

There are people who did this, and because of that, wiped their hard disk and lost all their data. Just as an example.

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u/MrBiscotte 1d ago

There is people that wiped their hard disk WITHOUT AI, I'm one of them when I started using linux 20 years ago.

Please also read my comment in full, specifically the part where I mention that you have to understand what commands does.

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u/zyndarius 1d ago

I wiped my entire disk like three times before learning to handle my computer. Good old 11 years old times.

0

u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago

Please also read my comment in full, specifically the part where I mention that you have to understand what commands does.

My implication was that AI lies and hallucinates. Using AI might make OP believe they understood, when they actually did not.

And the newest additions weren't there yet earlier, I did read them now.

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u/zyndarius 1d ago

Never forget that AI is a tool. If you kill yourself or your computer is your fault, not the tool's.

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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 1d ago

Yes indeed. And fhat from that POV, my comment (especially the 5th upwards) says "don't just have one tool that you fully rely on, but train to use other tools with their own advantages/disadvantages too".

Avoiding it at least partially will enable OP to locate determistic sources for relevant topics that they then already know, to cross-check information with multiple sources to make sure it's reliable, and so on.

1

u/Alarming_Disaster_23 1d ago

RAM compression.

u/dcdaz31 1d ago edited 1d ago

My recommendation is to read documentation and to experiment yourself, no matter if you break your system, you can reinstall it again (just backup important things so you won't regret for breaking it).

- Read Debian Handbook

- Read ArchLinux Wiki (not related to debian but a good wiki to read)

- Learn about how to secure your Debian (Permissions, Firewall, IPtables, NFTables, UFW).

- Lean how to partioning your SSD and why is a good practice to separate /home, /var, /.

- Learn diffs about Swap partition and swapfile and which one is better for your use case.

- Learn about the commands you use to copy, move, list files, to install/uninstall apps, etc

- Learn about terminal applications, nano, vim, ncmpcpp, rsync, btop, ranger, yazi, yt-dlp, etc. CLI/TUI is a lovely world.

- Learn about Desktop Environments such as XFCE, KDE, Gnome, and Window Managers such as openbox, labwc, i3, niri, etc

Once you understand what does X or Y command, or diffs between Debian versions Stable, Testing, Unstable and Backports. Why you shouldn't mix repos from one version into another, etc.

Then you can toy with AI as much as you want because you'll understand what's doing with your system.

And the most important thing, Enjoy your Linux system. Debian and Linux in general is a beautiful world but it takes some time to get use to it

u/Z_Perm_Coder-ggg 1d ago

Thank you all who gives advices, but please talk about something for beginners do i can understand

u/David_Connors3451 1d ago edited 1d ago

Install tlp and ufw for battery management and firewall. Enable contrib non-free repository and if you want modern apps, you can use flatpaks or even appimages.

Sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Put contrib non-free to all Debian mirrors. Debian has main and non free firmware as default, but contrib non-free need to be written in that configuration to be enabled.

Save and exit. Then use sudo apt update.

Sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Sudo apt update

Sudo apt install steam-installer (in case you want games)

You'll also need heroic launcher and proton plus for different layers of compatibility.

Sudo apt install flatpak

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org

Sudo reboot

If you want to install a flatpak application, in this case with this lightweight desktop you'll have to use the terminal. Lxqt doesn't have gnome or KDE app center. However you can add it with this:

sudo apt install discover plasma-discover-backend-flatpak

If you use those 3 commands, don't forget to reboot so Debian organize the application for the desktop interface.

For your daily life use this command, so you won't have problems with updates:

Sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && flatpak update -y

It's rare to see someone using lxqt, have fun👍🐧

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u/PavelPivovarov 1d ago

I would not recommend TLP to anyone who is not fully aware what one's doing. power-profiles-daemon works equally well, and requires zero configuration. You can configure TLP to squeeze more juice from the laptop's battery, but again, you need to understand what you are doing.

u/Far_Writer380 1d ago

Just a friendly reminder AI can be very wrong when it comes to giving you directions especially if it's terminal commands so always best to have a look at Debian help as they have pages where they explain some basic stuff.

https://wiki.debian.org/HelpIndex?pow_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Youth16 19h ago

I mean, yeah... but these pages are not beginner-friendly at all

u/Gianfyy 1d ago edited 1d ago

same thing but installed the 12 since the 13 lacked some libraries i needed to use for stremio on my old Aspire 5715z (it has an Intel core 2 duo t7500 and 2 GB of ram lol), i installed the lxqt and setting everything up was a pain and i needed help from gemini but now setting everything up is fricking fast unlike Mint xfce (my laptop fault 'cause it's garbage) but now everything works great. it's best to install codec multimedia just in case, of course update everything and installing flatpak, currently using it on terminal i'm seeing if i can find a light client for it, then enabling non free repository for all apps/libraries i could nerd and installed normal Firefox and deleted Firefox esr cause i like the classic one more. and basicslly that's it it was a pain to find a library specifically for stremio 4.4 and the worst was libmpv1 it didn't let me install it since 12 supports libmpv2 but gemini helped male a workaround so stremio and APT believes libmpv1 is installed but when it tries to run it or runs libmpv2. now something i hope you're aware of on debian you don't find a house, buy it and have everything ready (libraries, apps, drivers, and more...), with Debian you make your house unlike buying one all ready set up with all the furniture (for example Mint and Ubuntu). Hope i was for help and if you want to main it at least for me since i am a bit noob i wouldn't use as a daily driver unless you're ready if something happens to deal with it and tweak something. i'm using as main on my desktop Mint since it has lite rally every library and support possible if i install new apps or do anything i'm sure that i can do it without having to fear something might be missing. when we'll get better with Linux we can Daily Debian but for now lets just enjoy it and tweak it and stuff lol (Sorry for the long comment)

u/Brilliant_Sound_5565 1d ago

Deffo double check some of the commands AI gives you, most are correct but I do see it giving out wrong advise and when you question it often corrected itself, it's deffo not perfect

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u/Puzzleheaded-Youth16 19h ago

You can tell AI to only consult pages from the Debian website/wiki

u/billFoldDog 22h ago

My advice is to add flatpak. Flatpak will cost you a lot of hard drive space, but it will give you many up to date packages. You'll also want to disable a lot of the security.