On Sun, 25 Aug 2024 20:39:52 -0700 Will Mengarini <sel...@eskimo.com> 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*, 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"?) Yes, should be no problem. > > (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.) https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ This is recommended in the Debian CD guide: https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/index.en.html#write-usb > > (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.) "To burn the .iso to a CD on Microsoft Windows use IMGBurn or, if using Windows 10, the builtin "Burn to disc" option when right clicking an ISO file. " I would assume Win11 would also have that, I don't have one here. This and more information which may help you is here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstall > > (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.) Don't know. It Worked For Me, but that was several years ago. > > (5) If I can keep a Windows partition, how big must it be? All I know of that is that Win10 needed more than 32GB to do its first update from new. I'd guess 64GB should be safe, unless you plan on doing fairly heavyweight stuff or using virtual machines in Windows. I have Windows on a dual boot in that original 32GB, but with as much software installed on another partition as possible, and there's not much spare space. > > (6) Can/should I do the repartitioning from Windows > before installing Debian, & with what tool? No recent knowledge, but I just ran the Stretch installer (that's how long ago it was) with a new empty drive added, and it just did the whole thing itself. It wanted guidance as to what to put where, of course, and whether to shrink the Windows installation (I didn't, I just left it to its original drive, but that was quite small) but a Debian installer can repartition if required. > > (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.) How long was your piece of string, again? I have a mature sid installation with /usr and /var both around 12GB and another 4GB in /opt. /rppt is half a gig, boot with two kernels a quarter gig. The bits and pieces don't add up to much. I have lots of applications installed, but no real monsters other than libreoffice. There's obviously no typical Debian installation, Google will show you lots of answers to that question, but there's no real consensus. > > (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.) A lot depends on how old the initial Windows installation is. It may require several gigs of updates, and Windows updates take forever. Should be no problem with activation, and if the computer is a 'corporate' one (e.g. HP, Dell etc.) it may be already registered. I've never had any problems from Windows, which I don't use more than once a month, if that. My sid desktop is also dual boot, but I've only ever needed to run Windows on that because Microchip's 'cross-platform' IDE written in Java is more full of bugs that the original libreoffice fork was, and it doesn't work at all well in Linux. I don't think I've used it in more than a year. God help me at update time next time I use it... > > (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 haven't done that for a while, but puTTY has been around for decades and seems to do the job. I've no idea what facilities it has these days. https://www.putty.org/ Last time I used it, it generated keys in a different form from OpenSSH, I can't remember the details. That may have changed by now. > > 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. > You'll be lucky. By the time things get on the list, they're usually unavailable. Avoid the very latest hardware, it takes a while for drivers to appear. If at all possible, download and burn the latest Debian Live and ask for it to be booted on the chosen machine. Knoppix used to be the preferred distro for that, but the latest is now over two years old and the project seems to be stopped. Best of luck, and I might suggest getting hold of a very cheap few-year-old ex-corporate computer for backup. It's amazing how much easier life is with more than one computer. I wouldn't dare run sid if I only had one. -- Joe
