On 8/25/24 20:39, Will Mengarini wrote:
I need to buy a new desktop tower, which means
it'll have Windows installed. I haven't used
Windows since the 90s, so need some guidance.
A special complication is that I just had a computer
apocalypse in which a Power Surge From Hell nuked
*everything*,
I suggest hiring a qualified electrician verify the electrical grounding
system in your facility. Ask for a recommendation and a quote to
install surge arresters and/or lightning arresters at your electrical
service panel or other suitable location(s).
Consider getting a good power conditioner/ UPS for your computers and/or
electronics.
so trivial tasks like writing netinst to
a flash drive or CD-ROM are suddenly nontrivial: I need
to get Debian's netinst using Windows, with whatever
browser is there, then write it with Windows tools. So:
(1) Will an HTTPS download in Windows
suffice to get me an uncorrupted netinst?
(Anything I need to know about "binary mode"?)
(2) What Windows tool will write that netinst to flash?
Does Windows 10 Home have that tool? Pro? Windows 11?
(I don't know yet what Windows I'll end up with.)
(3) What Windows tool will write that netinst to CD-ROM?
Does Windows 10 Home have that tool? Pro? Windows 11?
(I have ancient beige boxes that might boot from CD-ROM
but not flash; they'd be useful as failsafes.)
I suggest buying Debian installation media from a vendor:
https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/
(4) Will the latest Mordorsoft dual-boot fsckup prevent
maintaining the Windows installation in its own partition,
so I have to nuke the only working OS before installing
Debian? Will that be true of Windows 10 as well as 11?
(This question MIGHT be really important, because I might
have the option of buying something with Windows 10
instead of 11; maybe that'd be a major win.)
(5) If I can keep a Windows partition, how big must it be?
(6) Can/should I do the repartitioning from Windows
before installing Debian, & with what tool?
Rather than dual-boot, I put trayless mobile racks in my computers and
put each OS on its own 2.5" SATA SSD:
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/s25slotr
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/hsb220sat25b
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/bracketfdbk
(7) I like the strategy of having /home in a separate
partition, so I can easily upgrade by doing a fresh
install. What's the minimum size you'd recommend
for a partition containing / but excluding /home
and intended to remain usable for the life of an
SDD, so presumably spanning many Debian releases?
(Remember I can't now look at an existing installation
for comparison; everything I had is toast.)
I put the vast majority of my data on a file server (FreeBSD, ZFS),
which allows me to keep my OS installations small enough to fit on "16
GB" drives (USB, SSD, HDD). This also facilitates taking images
regularly for disaster recovery.
(8) I've heard that the initial Windows setup process
has hair and takes an hour. People who buy towers
from Walmart have written that they needed Walmart
customer support to get their Windows "activated",
whatever that means. Any tips to avoid Windows
doing updates that'll bork dual-boot, or otherwise
just waste time? Remember that this will initially
be my only working computer. (I'm typing now on
the virtual keyboard of an ancient smartphone.)
(9) Does Windows have, or can it easily get, an
SSH client that'll let me shell in to my ISP
(Eskimo North) before I have Debian running?
I expect to read all of the Debian GNU/Linux Installation
Guide at https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/
eventually, but only the hardware-compatibility
stuff before making the hardware purchase.
Installing, activating, configuring, maintaining, etc., a Windows 10
computer is non-trivial. I found "Windows 10 Inside Out", 4th Edition,
to be very helpful:
https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-10-inside-out-9780136784159
That said -- I suggest buying or building a computer with no operating
system or with some distribution of Linux.
As new computers can have chips that are too new for Debian Stable, and
therefore unsupported, I suggest buying or building a computer with
parts that are at least a few years old (2+ years?). Off-lease
corporate workstations and servers can be a very good value.
David
