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. Not necessarily; some vendors (Silent PC, e.g.) will sell you bare metal. However, that won't solve your problems. > > 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"?) Binary/text modes are peculiar to FTP and irrelevant to HTTPS or bittorrent. > > (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.) > > (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.) I have not had that problem installing to create a dual boot system. > > (5) If I can keep a Windows partition, how big must it be? My two recent Windows boxen came with 100M EFI, 16M Microsoft Reserved, and 800M Microsoft recovery environment. I kept 60G for Windows, and put Debian 12 on the remainder. Windows alone occupies about 30G, leaving the rest for who knows what. Note that the Microsoft recovery environment is at the end of the disk; I did not try to move it to the beginning of the open space. So, on a 256G device: Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 206847 204800 100M EFI System /dev/sda2 206848 239615 32768 16M Microsoft reserved /dev/sda3 239616 126068735 125829120 60G Microsoft basic data /dev/sda4 498479104 500117503 1638400 800M Windows recovery environment /dev/sda5 126068736 127068159 999424 488M Linux filesystem /dev/sda6 127068160 498479103 371410944 177.1G Linux filesystem > > (6) Can/should I do the repartitioning from Windows > before installing Debian, & with what tool? I used a dedicated parted USB stick. I wouldn't even want to try resizing a mounted partition. Also consider using a live DVD. https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/ > > (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.) On my desktop (no Windows), I have a root partition and a separate home: root@hawk:~# df / /home Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/hawk2021vg-hawk2021root 105G 76G 25G 76% / /dev/mapper/hawk2021vg-hawk2021home 80G 65G 11G 86% /home root@hawk:~# But your mileage will almost certainly vary. > > (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.) I did not have any such problem. Boot into Windows, and let it do its thing. Remember that Windows will do updates whether you want it to or not, and you dare not shut the thing down while it is doing them. > > (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've heard good things about Putty, but don't use it myself. > > 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. > Good idea. -- Does anybody read signatures any more? https://charlescurley.com https://charlescurley.com/blog/
