Back to the future, debian again. Ubuntu begone!
Nearly two years ago I wrote a blog that whined a bit about how Ubuntu had changed too many things, especially the snap monstrosity. I think I earned the right to complain since I first installed Linux in 1994 or so.
Then I went back to Ubuntu. I wanted dual secondary screens. Now? Meh. Not as important. But I still had that rig on Ubuntu, mostly because once it was set up it was fine.
I solved the snap thing: I wrote a script that just removed all the snap crap. But they keep just changing things for no good reason, and then I simply could not find where they configured DNS resolution when it SHOULD be in the standard place. Somehow it was magically caching DNS settings, and I was moving my DHCP/DNS from my Unifi rig over to a dedicated server (don’t ask, I just needed higher granularity of control) and it’s been a long time since I wanted to throw a linux machine into the bay.
I was getting some weird unexplained “System Error Reports” anyway, and I’d just installed Debian on some small computers for testing anyway, so what the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound!
But.
The notebook I was installing on is a Dell Inspiron 5000 Gaming PC. Older. Crap keyboard. But it works as a dev box that has a second screen for displaying monitoring graphs. Wait. What? You don’t have extra monitors just to show monitoring? I digress.
I somehow blew up the UEFI config. Much angste. I did finally fine a reference that helped.
For posterior: if after you install it won’t boot, then you blew up the Boot Option config. Go into the BIOS Config (F2 on boot) and then under “Boot Sequence” you pick any name you want for the new “Boot Option Name” (I picked Debian). Then navigate the “File Name” to find /EFI/Debian/grubx64.efi.
Then it gets happy. I’m sure I have to tweak the GPU stuff and manually add the right drivers for WiFi. That all should be on the DebianOn pages I hope. I’ll keep you appraised.
Just think, DNS configured by /etc/resolv.conf! The world is right again.
