One of the areas that I’m weak with when it comes to is IT. Sure, I’ve done some basic things with RaspPi, and I can do some ESXI stuff, but by and large, I’m pretty lost when it comes to Linux.
Since the best way to learn something is to jump right in, over the weekend I installed Debian on my main laptop. My primary use of my laptop is RDP when I travel (over a VPN of course) to my main desktop, so this was a low-risk move. However, it would give me the option to really dig into it.
Right off the bat, I hit some difficulties. Debian doesn’t include WiFi drivers for my wireless card (an Intel one). I had to download those from Debian’s site and drop them on my USB key. That was a bit of a surprise.
However, once I was past that, the rest of the install went smoothly. Once I was in and set up, I spent some time getting all the things set up the way I liked.
All the other drivers seemed to be set up automatically. I remember (years ago) having to fight with display drivers, but all that was seamless.
I then started installing the software that I wanted to use. Since I use O365 for most everything, I just ran that through the browser, and called it day. Same with WhatsApp. However, I saw that Slack had an app, so I used that instead.
Just for fun, I installed Steam. I was surprise to see the amount of supported games that they had added. I did some reading, and it looks like a lot of them run using emulators. I’ll have to do some testing on that at a later date. While my laptop isn’t much for gaming, I’ve always enjoyed playing simpler games on it, like Darkest Dungeon, Sunless Seas, and Stardew Valley.
I’ll be adding more writings on this as I go.