Debian Buster on The Thinkpad T43

Installed Buster on Saturday, wiping the Sid install I've made back on Juǹe.
Got fed up of installing updates all the time, every time... The T43 is wayy too slow and I use this one quite sparingly, so Sid will eventually break, besides, I love the predictability of Stable, what can I say?
Even tho I've used the non-free installer, with the extra proprietary drivers, and that the installer did recognized the T43's WiFi card, it was impossible to connect to the AP, so, in the end, did the install using the old and trusty PCMCIA WiFi card, simply removed it after the install is finished, and things went kosher.

Not Sid Anymore (2)

And this time it was the turn for the beloved T60.
Changed the HDD and then made a Buster net install with XFCE, bye i3, thanks for all the tiling, most definitively not my cup of tea.
A first one this time, tho... Had a IP address conflict that prevented downloading all of the necessary packages to finish the installation, so I had to go back on the installer, and setup a fixed IP address for the T60 (on the Ethernet port, since the WiFi card of the lappie isn't recognized by the plain vanilla installer, it needs the non-free drivers added)

Not Sid Anymore

 

Yeah, it didn't last long...
Sid is nice, but I find a bit of PITA to have to be updating stuff all the time, and for my use case I really don't need the newest of the new software, at all.
So, since we are having an election day weekend, I had a "day off" today (that is, no GF), ended up using the time to install Buster (32 bits, of couse) (XFCE, of course) on the T60p.

XFCE is Getting Quirky

Came up with this error (or warning) message while setting up the T60p with its new Sid install.
First time I see something like this, guess you could say that things are really getting classy on the Linux Desktop.

And Yet Another Sid

Or better yet, another XFCE.
Replaced the HDD on the amazing, heavy and trusty T60p with another one, leaving i3 behind, maybe momentarily.

So, installed Buster XFCE, and then, switched the thing to Sid, following the steps I listed here, that is, editing the sources.list file and then apt commands.
So after something really close to 600 MB of downloads (and deleting about 200 MB of autoremove) later, things look rather fine.

Yes, i3 is really cool, but my workflow is wired to XFCE, what can I say?
That, and also, I wanted to see how the newest of the new XFCE (4.14 at this time) performs on the T60p and what new wonders has to offer.

The Risks of Not Updating Sid on a While

This is what happens when you don't update Sid in a while... 166 packages need to be updated.
Guess in this case, I haven't updated it on something like 3 weeks.

The Current Debian Desktop

And this time, the T43 edition.
What my beloved Thinkpad T43 desktop looks these days, sporting i3.
The open Emacs, on the lower Xterm, is showing off the ever cool Tronesque theme, my favorite Emacs theme at the moment.

Livin' On The Edge

I like to live dangerously.
Everything is A Ok after the updates and a reboot.

Intel Firmware Bearing Great Gifts

Besides enabling and activating the internal Wifi NIC, installing the Intel firmware, the ipw2200-bss.fw, seems to have fixed those nasty hangs coming back from Suspend I was suffering on the trusty T43.

The Current Debian Desktop

A little something, my i3 desktop screnshot from the trusty T43.
Have to fix a small glitch with the Wifi on i3status bar... Since I've changed from the PCMCIA card to the internal Wifi one, i3status went bollocks and refuses to show the strength percentage and the SSID name... Go figure...

T43: Kernel Panic After Suspend

My little and trusty T43 has a little problem...
It fails to come back from a Suspend, it simply hangs with error message.
Only option to bring it back to life is to do a hard reboot.

XFCE + i3 (on Sid & LM 19)

So, installed i3 on both Sid and on Linux Mint 19, as an add on of XFCE, just as an experiment and to see how things how.
I do have a full i3 lappie, the glorious T43, but I wanna see how everything goes running i3 along XFCE... There are a couple of site on the internet with instructions, but those are sort of "Xubuntu centrist" and they also give you advise regarding installing third party PPAs, but I don't want to do that.
What I did was to install a "minimal i3", like this:

sudo apt install i3 --no-install-recommends

After that, simply disabled (set to Never) "xfwm4" and "xfdesktop" on Session and then on Application Autostart, add an entry to start i3.

Logout and back in and you are done.

Or almost...

On Debian Sid:
You can use the Windows key as the $modifier.

On Linux Mint 19 (XFCE):
You have to use Alt as the $modifier. or all Hell breaks loose.

On both of them:
Edit the "~/.config/i3/config" file and comment the 'bar' entry, it is at the end of the file, if you don't you'll have the i3 Status bar (printing an error) as well as the XFCE Panel.

The Sid Week (2)

The other lucky winner from the Sid Week, my beloved T43 running Sid and i3.

Debian Sid Installation Tidbits (T60p & T43)

Some notes of the install process on both the T60p and the T43

After making a Debian net install from a Debian 9, choosing only the "SSH Server" and the "Standard System Utilities" options upon the Software Selection.
After the install is over (on an encrypted LVM, of course) installed:

sudo apt-get install sudo zile

Yes, sudo, I'm an old fart and I like to have a root account around, of course, closed to SSH, also I like to use Zile a lot, a minimal Emacs.
Then, with that installed, edited the "/etc/apt/sources.list" file, to look like this:

deb http://debian.unnoba.edu.ar/debian/ sid main
deb-src http://debian.unnoba.edu.ar/debian/ sid main

All the other entries are commented... If you are using proprietary drivers, the "/etc/apt/sources.list" file looks like this:

deb http://debian.unnoba.edu.ar/debian/ sid main

deb-src http://debian.unnoba.edu.ar/debian/ sid main

## Non Free

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free

deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free

Again, all the other entries on the file are commented...
Proprietary drivers or not, after editing the file, issue a:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get autoremove

Then reboot the box:

sudo reboot

Some other programs I've installed to complete the setup:

sudo apt install apt-listbugs apt-listchanges

sudo apt install alsa-utils

(alsamixer to unmute (m) and then speaker-test to check buttons)

sudo apt install xorg

sudo apt install i3

sudo apt install links2

sudo apt install pmount (to mount USB drives as regular user)

The Sid Week

So, finally, Debian won... Sorry Void.
This past week installed Debian Sid on both the T60p and the T43, on the latter one, the little lappie that still delivers and that had its guts cleansed, installed i3, just for shit and giggles.
Boy oh boy, I have to say that I love that Window Manager...
Certainly see the myself using it a lot on the near future.
Also, I love how the T60p looks in this picture.

So... Cinnamon...

Yeap... Some tests were performed... Need to replace the OS on a couple of lappies around here sooner than later, so, testing time!
Following a a very brief and very disastrous stint with Sid, gave a shot at Cinnamon, first on Debian Stretch and then on Linux Mint 18, mostly because that is the last Cinnamon version that I like, it is stupid, but that version is the last one AFAIK that still has the pointy menu.
Yeah, I know, it is stupid, but what a hell, the Computer is Personal since 1981 or so, right?
Kinda like my ongoing obsession with mouse cursor icon customization.
Cinnamon looks great (specially on the high resolution screen of the T60p) but compared to XFCE, the lack of options it is big, big no-no.