Okay. Please help me as I ask COMPUTER BABBY QUESTIONS.
I have a Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 (AMD).
It has a 256 GB HD. That's too small. I want to buy a new, bigger one. I have a sense the good hard drives these days are "M.2".
Lenovo's specs page
https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/thinkpad-t14-gen-3-(14-inch-amd)/len101t0013
doesn't say anything about "M.2". It says the hd is "PCIe".
I run "lshw" to see what's on the computer. It says "NVMe".
How do I find out the bestest fastest aftermarket drive Canada Computers carries that my computer will support
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I only understand computation as the MANIPULATION OF ABSTRACT PLATONIC FORMS. I do not understand this realm where computers are "physical objects" you manipulate with "screwdrivers". I would prefer to use Math to translate my thoughts directly into action, as if I am casting magic spells
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Okay thank you all for explaining. I have one more question: Is there actually, like, a difference between drive vendors. Like if I pick WD vs Samsung vs Lexar (vs… "crucial"?!) will it ever make any difference
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Okay. So I think I have my plans for the hard drive complete. Now here's the shedpainty question:
The old drive has Ubuntu 24.04 on it. I hate it.
Should I trade down to Debian?
Or should I trade up to Pop!_OS?
Will I regret either of these? Will either one, if I just go get a standard usb key installation, cause driver problems with my AMD chipset or secure boot or whatever other junk Lenovo has on board?
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Okay I have more computer build babby questions
I got a hard drive
But I've been warned it's one that runs hot
So I think I want a thermal "strip", which is apparently a heatsink that fits into smol spaces like a laptop
I google
https://www.amazon.ca/Deal4GO-Heatsink-5B40Z68852-Replacement-Thinkpad/dp/B0CDSBKD1X
This looks good! Oh, they're out of stock. Except wait, why doesit say "replacement"?
I watch installation instructions
https://youtu.be/8sm1ScVUHqY?t=108
Is there a hd heatsink strip in my friggin laptop already?? (1/2)
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I only want to open up the laptop once. Trying to decide if I should
(a) just open it and assume there's already a heatstrip
(b) I poke around and there's lots of weird blue polymer strips that seem to do the same thing? It wouldn't be that expensive to just buy one and have it around if it turns out there's not one in there already…
https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=m.2+thermal+pad&crid=2UQ8R3U74NIPB&sprefix=m+2+thermal+pad%2Caps%2C92&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
(c) set the computer preemptively on fire, so that the hard drive can't be the one to overheat it
(2/2)
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Update: Fuck this town i'm out
=> View attached media | View attached media
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Alright one last shedpainting question. Should I install Debian Stable or Debian Testing. Text replies welcome
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@mcc you can't go far wrong with #debian
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@mcc trade up to debian imo. d-i ships with even non-free firmware by default now so it should be fine, and SB is SOP everywhere nowadays
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@mcc I've been running Pop!_OS for a year now on a laptop, it's like having an old Ubuntu LTS release but someone already setup the nvidia gunk for me. Kindof annoying from a dev POV because it's using a lot of old packages, probably wouldn't rec over Ubuntu unless someone else handling nvidia gunk is attractive for you
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@machinewitch i want cosmic but i'm not sure it actually works yet
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@mcc i dunno either, my laptop is still on gnome 🤷♀️
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@mcc @machinewitch Cosmic... works. It's not polished or refined, but you can daily-drive it if you're willing to overlook jank.
Source: I use Cosmic on my Fedora Silverblue install.
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@mcc Depends how restless you are. When I was young and restless, I ran #Slackware. Now I am middle aged and sedentary, I run #Debian. For a short interstitial period, I ran #Arch. I couldn't countenance Ub*ntu. They always want to foist some commercial spin on you, web search or snap or whatever, no doubt it will be some AI misery next...
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@kbm0 i went Bootleg PPC Redhat -> Bootleg PPC Debian -> Slackware -> Regular Debian -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu -> Fake Arch [msys2] -> Ubuntu. Now I am old, and I am just tired of bullshit
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@mcc I do think of Debian, Arch and Slackware as the trifecta of honest Linux. Arch is the well meaning youngster, Debian the wise old matriarch and Slackware the idealistic old rebel who would never conform. They are each in their own way true to their principles. ✌️🙂
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@kbm0 @hisham_hm @mcc there are also Fedora and SuSE of you want a different brand of quite fresh corporate backed Linux distributions. IIRC fedora also has different, uh, flavours (IIRC they call it spins) that do different things, and Fedora Atomic is an interesting approach.
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@viq @kbm0 @hisham_hm I think I might be trying to avoid IBM now.
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@mcc Given how Ubuntu aggressively pushes Ubuntu Pro, even for packages that they don’t need to back port security patches for, as well as packages that weren’t in the Pro repos when the LTS version released, Debian seems like a good choice. You might have to disable secure boot for the installer to boot, though. The wiki is comprehensive, and I’d advise to read at least the chapter about DKMS https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#DKMS_and_secure_boot
Also, Debian doesn’t force snap on you. That’s an astronomical plus in my book.
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@mcc I like Debian. It's what I ran on every computer before I started migrating most things to Guix. It's still one of my favorite distros, and I just overall find it to be rock solid.
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@mcc I jumped ship to Pop! OS after Ubuntu went to snaps. I absolutely love it.
Pop is a bit opinionated, but I got used to its defaults. (E.g. "super+B" to open the browser, rather than "super+2" to open the second item on my dashbar.)
One problem: Pop ditches grub for systemd boot, which gave me problems with a triple-boot setup. I would expect this to be the biggest possible source of friction. I ended up fixing it in my mobo's BIOS
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@lynndotpy hm, I'm not overly fond of grub, it doesn't actually support my screen resolution well
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@mcc Also: System76 is working on the next generation of their Cosmic DE, moving from a modded GNOME to a custom Rust-based DE.
This yields two potential sources of regret:
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@lynndotpy yes but consider: ubuntu 24.04 is buggy as fuck
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@mcc what you appear to hate about Ubuntu is unity. I have Ubuntu + i3 and it doesn't annoy me at all.
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@nxskok Also Snap!
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@mcc
I've heard very good things about pop os, but haven't tried it myself
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@mcc I daily-drove Debian for several years and it was nice. Since they only do a release once every several years, things (e.g. GNOME) get pretty out-of-date over time.
Can't speak for Pop!, I think I only used it for maybe an hour one time before overwriting it with Fedora.
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@mcc This is your ThinkPad?
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@ieure yeh
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@mcc Are you aware of the need to disable the internal battery prior to opening?
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@ieure yes, it's in the video i link above. but thank you anyway as it's very important
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@mcc thermal conduction pads/strips are usually grey or blue (sometimes a pinkish colour, rarely yellow). They are semi-tacky and easily show fingerprints. Very very common in laptops on solid state drives and even on top of parts like the CPU and GPU and related components. If you can find out the thickness of the pads already install, it's better but as long as it's not crazy thick, you should be fine. :)
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@mcc I never bothered with thermal pads on SN850X in my Framework laptop. Hasn't caused any problems yet.
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@mcc That was exactly my reaction the last time I wanted to install an ubuntu and it recommended Balena Etcher
I'll stick with good old dd thanks
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@nev It sounds extremely fake
Like ChatGPT tried to come up with a name for a computer program
Or if a network television writer had to come up with a name for a one-off character who is an Artist and somewhat snooty
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@mcc and I don't know why this bothers me so much but it's not even in the repos I don't think???
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@mcc @nev It's the name of a YouTube channel dedicated to whale scrimshaw.
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@hendric @mcc Balena Escher offers several architecture options: amd64, arm64, i386, impossible
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@nev @mcc If you're ever fed up googling dd arguments, you can actually just cat or cp the iso straight to the device. dd hasn't been needed in decades. I forget why it was ever needed.
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@evert @mcc wait for real?????
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@nev @mcc yah frankly i love dropping this fact on people haha. dd is a pain to remember yet everyone defaults to it for specifically this task.
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@evert @mcc apparently back in the day it was better-suited to working with binaries than cat, and I suppose the rest is tradition.
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@evert@indieweb.social @nev@bananachips.club @mcc@mastodon.social it's literally 2 arguments i don't understand how people forget
then again i remember really specific nerd stuff forever sometimes then can't at all remember 95% of other stuff, even other really specific nerd stuff, so fair i guess
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@hanna @mcc @nev i write an iso to a device twice per year and dd looks different than any other tool. plus cp works just fine, or you can use pv
and get a nice progress bar!
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@mcc I used to run stable with backports, but eventually bit the bullet and moved to testing (IIRC, backports didn't always have all of the software I wanted). Testing is basically a rolling distro most of the time, except for when it freezes for new major #debian releases. There can be upgrade headaches just after the freeze expires, but I typically just give testing a month or two to stabilize after the freeze expires before upgrading.
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@mcc Apocryphal answer incoming:
Both.
Stable is a whole distro, ensure it's installed.
Add testing sources as well.. it's not the whole distro, but what can't be resolved in testing will be resolved by stable.
Yes, once in a blue moon, you'll encounter a weird package issue. Blue moons, however, are very rare.
I'd say add unstable on top (it's the least complete), but that requires nuance, e.g. pin testing as the default, you do NOT want everything to come from unstable by default.
1/2
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@mcc my argument for stable is as follows:
(my read is that you do not enjoy Fucking Around With Linux which colors my recommendation.)
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@d6 Yeah I uh there is a kind of Fucking Around I want to do and I need a stable base system so I can Fuck Around with the things I want to Fuck Around with instead of fucking around with like, I don't fucking know, my app switcher
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@mcc right i would describe this as "i enjoy planned fucking around" and "i want to avoid unplanned fucking around"
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@d6 @mcc *so long as all your hardware is old enough that geriatric software will actually run on it, and so long as your software is all old enough to be happy running on geriatric platform software. If that's not the case then you get flipped around and a stable distro is the opposite of stable.
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@d6 @mcc e.g. if you buy a new laptop you likely want to be running the latest or near the latest kernel just so it actually like, works. There's usually some number of small functionality enablement that needs to happen. Then if you want to run new software (like e.g. steam games) you need graphics drivers that aren't from the middle ages. And any applications you want to use, you likely want the latest version of those too. (Debian stable has blender 3.4, for example, current upstream is 4.3)
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@dotstdy @d6 I have a 1 year old laptop. The Ubuntu 24.04 kernel has had some bugs over the last year actually but now seems to be working, so if I can get this kernel in stable I'll take it. I have no intent of installing blender from .deb, that would be a Flatpak. The only piece of .deb software I want up to date is Firefox (but I'd be happy with Firefox ESR, honestly)
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@d6 @mcc flatpack sandboxes apps, so you trade these things kinda working on ye old distro for random stuff being annoying or broken inside the sandbox. /shrug but ime any notion of "stable" distros actually being stable for daily desktop use isn't really how it ends up working out unless you have very specific desires.
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@dotstdy @d6 i'm already effectively doing this on ubuntu with snap and it's fine. except for not getting image previews in open dialogs. which i think is a snap specific issue.
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@mcc @d6 indeed that sounds like a snap problem that you'll likely also have in flatpack. I'd just be prepared for a different set of issues for flatpack v.s. snap :P (ultimately though, it'll all be fine enough either way, I'd just generally recommend the complete opposite, rolling distros being more stable for desktop use than stable distros are ime)
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@dotstdy @d6 @mcc On new hardware not (well) supported by Debian stable's kernel, I usually run Debian stable with a more recent kernel (either from testing or hand-compiled)
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@dotstdy i tend to use old/second-hand hardware a lot in preference to buying new things, but a couple years ago work bought me a new thinkpad 15s with an nvidia GPU and i was able to run debian stable on it with support for all the hardware and everything i needed.
it's true that most of my software needs are not bleeding edge but i'm able to run a web browser, signal messenger, steam, etc on it with no problems. obviously ymmv but i would not describe that hardware or software as geriatric.
(it's true that the calculus is different for non-amd64 platforms such arm, risc-v, etc. that are more likely to need bleeding edge kernel and userspace fixes. which is why things like armbian exist.)
cc @mcc
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@d6 @mcc it's really down to the exact hardware you have and how much you care about it working. E.g. if your touchpad happens to need quirks, or your webcam, or the audio, or suspend, etc. Weirder device specific things tend to be more likely to break. Which is why I wouldn't recommend it, the likelihood of something being broken with a new kernel is far lower than random feature of your laptop being broken unless you have a recent kernel. e.g see the quirk listings here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/ASUS
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@dotstdy your comment is noted. but this has not been my experience and i've lost interest in arguing about it.
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@mcc debian stable 12 saved me from the xz exploit
it did this by being so old that the exploit code hadn't been added in 2 years of updates (presumably, for security reasons)
...this discussion is making me consider switching to testing but i haven't run directly into the need yet. probably.
...or maybe the version of qt was too old and that's why it missed a symbol and the prismlauncher update failed.
still, this is dramatically less painful than nix, so,
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@mcc Been running testing for a decade. I'm too impatient for stable.
Actually I also add unstable and sometimes experimental sources (particularly when there are major ongoing transitions and i'm impatient for everthing to flow from unstable->testing)
1/2
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@lambdageek Hm. Is it correct that it's easy enough to install stable first and upgrade to testing if I change my mind later?
Also, just checking, is Debian gonna expect me to choose a kernel version myself? The last time I installed it was, uh, checks the year 2000, off a floppy disk net installer
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