So, if you've been following along; last year we installed debian jessie (the same revision of debian that runs on small computers like the raspberry pi) -- most of the big blog sites are still touting other revisions of linux for these small computers some of them are based on debian, some not. My thoughts? -- well it depends on what you need.
I wanted a very crisp install, minimalist with very little messing around (we still have to manually install the SD card but it works, just fine). I wanted modern word processing, as well as to be able to use the webcam for occasional web conference/ hangouts session. I don't care as much about the QOL improvements offered by ubuntu (though i don't mind them, I just don't have the resources on this platform). I wanted stable, free/open (as possible), well supported/secure. This is how I landed on debian last time, this time I did again
Why Stretch?:
In a word, Jessie is old... it comes out of the box with old pre-configured packages... AND the big one ... Stretch seems to perform better on streaming video in almost every aspect, even with 1G of ram. It's fairly amazing how well it works (still not perfect but it doesn't peg the CPU usage when Netflix is running for the time being at least.) Debian is about as no frills as it gets, without REALLY roughing it. You could throw DSL (Damn small Linux) on there and try it ... it would very be small but very much you bring everything to the party yourself.With regards to video performance I should have checked before I wiped the laptop if Debian Jessie was using the VESA drivers under X. Sure seems that way based on the video performance, the other thing to keep in mind with that is the platform the graphics card runs on is completely not open (and lacks good support within the linux community) I did check on the new install and it seams at least that Stretch is using intel branded drivers for the graphics .... perhaps this means all is well now?
What I Assume:
Again, assumed you know a bit about linux, about putting a ISO on a thumb drive to boot and install linux ... you could google these things; none of them are obscure. I assume the D255E you are using has the same hardware options as mine, and that you've updated the firmware all the way to the latest and greatest (though i don't know if this matters much). Also I assume you have skimmed at least my last blog post about the D255E:https://davesmindsoup.blogspot.com/2017/02/breathing-new-life-into-my-acer-d255e.html
Below are the directions for a clean install, you will want to have taken care of backing up your data first. You can do a in place upgrade but I don't like to do that between revisions. I also made a complete drive image with parted magic of my working install before i started, I always recommend this with any full clean install. Ok, Lets GO!
Let's Start by downloading the Netinstall:
I'm not so sure if you have to use the non-free installer anymore, I did, as its got a lot of non-open architecture in the laptop (the CPU / Graphics Card). I did this to play it safe more than anything. I did find it odd the laptop's memory card reader is still not supported in non-free by Debian. (yet the wifi adapter and the web cam are)http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/9.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso
You will use a USB thumb drive to boot the laptop. (whatever method you choose)
I again did the non-graphical standard install at boot up. I picked LXDE again, I still think its the best window manager for the laptop but you should play around and decide for yourself.
Not much to recommend about the install itself. It went off fairly without a hitch. I would recommend you write down your WIFI password if you don't rely on your memory for it ... otherwise you are going to have to reference the sticker on your router (or wherever you are keeping it) during the install.
Chrome:
to put chrome on (the distro comes with firefox). You can now simply:
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
You will want to install an ad blocking addon, i use fair ad blocking, but i turn everything on because i have to for performance reasons, there are alot of unoptimised flash ads and this will over tax the CPU making simple tasks on the internet unbearable.
The Memory Card Reader:
We still go over to:https://github.com/rhertzog/firmware-nonfree/tree/master/linux-nonfree/ene-ub6250
Download all 6 files and put them in a new directory /lib/firmware/ene-ub6250
then we do:
depmod -ae
update-initramfs -u
reboot
(I got a warning ... it may be a bug with depmod because it still worked)
again you may have to cycle the memory card in and out of the slot to get it to show up in PCManFM, but it should automount memory cards now.
Again I came across the idea for this here, Thanks again dale for your blog:
http://blog.dale.id.au/ene-technology-inc-sd-card-reader-ub6250/
Running updates:
so when you are done installing running updates from within debian is fairly simple.go to the root console and type:
apt-get update
apt-get full-upgrade
reboot
You may get a prompt to continue a few times but usually just one. There are no automatic updates though i suppose you could write a script for this to be checked every time you boot up -- this is kind of at cross purpose from the nature of debian.
