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P1nky

Member

Registered: 2020-12-01

Posts: 6  

Installing on a new laptop

Having been a user of Devuan every since the infection of Debian (which was my OS of choice since around '03), I have been very happy with it as my only OS on 3 devices (all ancient systems, if I'm honest!) I have finally decided to get a newer laptop, and have bought a nice shiny Dell, and therein lies my problem. I checked on the running systems that all the hardware is supported, but didn't check that the AX201 wifi is supported on the installation images! I did consider installing with just the desktop image, then updating, but how do I do that with not network connection?
Does anyone know of a solution (even if it means installing a derivative, and adjusting that)? Until I get the wifi working, I'm stuck in the hell that is Windows 10!

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Installing on a new laptop

The AX201 should be supported by the firmware-iwlwifi & kernel packages in the beowulf-backports repositories.

The .deb packages can be downloaded from Debian's repositories (which are mirrored in Devuan by amprolla):

http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/non-f … +1_all.deb

http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/ … _amd64.deb

Download those on another machine then transfer them to your Devuan system and install them. Afterwards you can add the beowulf-backports repositories and install the linux-image-amd64 metapackage from there so that the kernel is kept updated.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-12-01 19:23:08)

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

hemimaniac

Member

Registered: 2020-02-04

Posts: 5  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

In my case, (at the time my onboard WIFI wasn't supported) I simply used the full install image, then after restarting simply "tethered" to my tablet to router to download and installed the backport-package. Went off without a hitch.

P1nky

Member

Registered: 2020-12-01

Posts: 6  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

The AX201 should be supported by the firmware-iwlwifi & kernel packages in the beowulf-backports repositories.

The .deb packages can be downloaded from Debian's repositories (which are mirrored in Devuan by amprolla):

http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/non-f … +1_all.deb

http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/ … _amd64.deb

Download those on another machine then transfer them to your Devuan system and install them. Afterwards you can add the beowulf-backports repositories and install the linux-image-amd64 metapackage from there so that the kernel is kept updated.

After a little effort, this worked. Unfortunately I seem to have bought too new a laptop, as most of the system is not running optimally. I'm currently updating the whole setup to chimaera, to try and get the Optimus system working, and will then start on getting the audio system working.

Thankfully, these issues are not show-stoppers, and the core setup works enough for this to be my main work system.

P1nky

Member

Registered: 2020-12-01

Posts: 6  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

Just to update, I got the whole shebang (bar a minor function that I don't care about) working this morning (just in time for some work Zoom meetings!) I had to disable the mic detect on the sound driver (seems to be common with some Intel cards), but the external mic on my headset works perfectly. The only non functioning feature is the  Goodix fingerprint reader, but that's a gimmick IMHO. Moving to chimaera has allowed me to avoid the pain of bumblebee, and still use both GFX cards properly.

I have had a few odd packages that were auto-installed with other stuff, that then broke, but simply removing those brought everything into good order. I maybe shouldn't admit this, but I haven't had so much fun getting a system working since about '98 (when I switched from Red Hat to Slackware).

Last edited by P1nky (2020-12-03 19:02:13)

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

Instead of switching to chimaera - did you try using beowulf with just the kernel from unstable or backports?

P1nky

Member

Registered: 2020-12-01

Posts: 6  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

Instead of switching to chimaera - did you try using beowulf with just the kernel from unstable or backports?

I did, and the vast majority of things worked, but there were so many functions that didn't quite work as planned, so I did a bit of research, and found that the more recent kernels are really needed to properly support this laptop's hardware. Full use of the secondary GPU with bumblebee was a royal pain, and the sound card flat-out refused to work without pulling in stuff from Ceres or Chimaera.
I did run a hybrid Chimaera/Beowulf installation for a while, but eventually ended up with X not picking up the keyboard (too many hacky combinations), so gave a full-on Chimaera migration a go, with great success so far. I don't have any objections to running on the "testing" release, having been a sysadmin for longer than I care to think about! If it all goes badly wrong, I can roll back fairly simply, or even go for a clean start in under 2 hours.

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Installing on a new laptop

Well, bullseye is already in the first freeze as of today, so I assume things will get rather more stable over time since the release is not too far away (I expect it in May/June).