I got an old Windows 7 laptop that was going to be thrown out and decided to put Linux on it (see previous thread here). Most people suggested I go with the latest stable version of Debian, so that’s what I installed. I’ve mostly used Windows, but I do have some experience with Ubuntu.

The installation went smoothly, but I’ve had a few problems getting it set up to my liking:

  1. I can’t figure out how to setup flatpak. Everything seems to be working fine until I enter the last line in the terminal:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

I hit enter and nothing happens. No error message or anything. I restarted the computer but flatpak doesn’t work, either through the software center or the flatpak website. I found a few forum posts with the same problem, but no solutions.

  1. I somehow set it up so that my username is not the super user, so I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo. Is there a way to fix this without a clean install?

  2. I somehow set up the hard drive partitions so that the OS is on an encrypted partition, so I have to put in a password for the BIOS to boot up. Is there a way to fix this without a clean install?

  3. I’m used to a desktop interface with a toolbar/start menu that I can pin frequently-used programs to, but with Debian it seems like I need to click “Activities” to do anything. Is there a way to set up the interface so it’s more like Windows in that regard?

  4. If I need to do a clean install, I’m thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I’m more familiar with the interface. Is there any reason why I should stick with Debian? I’ve heard some people trashing Ubuntu but I’m not sure why. Is Debian better for older hardware?

Edit: Thanks for all the knowledgeable replies. For reference, this is a Dell XPS M1530 running the 32 bit version of Debian 12 and Gnome.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s just, we get so many questions regarding Flatpak from newer users:

    • Why doesn’t App A tie into App B?
    • Why doesn’t the program tie into my desktop environment?
    • How can I install Addons?
    • Why can’t I access files somewhere

    And it’s just not easy. The Apps/Programs are sandboxed and can’t tie into each other unless specifically made for this. Addons need to be put inside of that environment or the program needs to be fitted with some kind of Appstore that incorporates this. You can’t just download an addon from github and drag and drop it like the instruction says. New users blame that on Linux. And you need to understand the additional Flatpak permission system.

    In my experience these problems have really increased in the last year or so.

    Next thing is, you lose what the distro maintainers do for you. They double check that everything works together well and is tied into your desktop. Breaking changes are postponed until the next major releas of the distro. Since you mentioned Debian, they strip tracking behaviour, and most importanly they fix security issues quickly. Once I read about a severe vulnerability in libpng it’s often already fixed or takes them like one to three days.

    Everytime I have a look at ‘flatpak list’ I have like 3 different versions of some runtime installed and it takes half a year until the last flatpak app is updated to the release without that vulnerability. And I get that. Programmers of a project mainly code, maintenance and packaging the stuff isn’t necessarily top priority on their agenda. But you as a user are exposed for months and I usually expect exploits to appear in the wild after some weeks.

    That may be less of a concern if you install OBS via flatpak or a game. But this would be bad if it’s a web-browser or a messenger.

    That’s why I usually tell people not to use Flatpak. If you know about the consequences and how to handle the sandboxing and get an addon working, go ahead. Maybe subscribe to a mailing list regarding the security vulnerabilities, because that’s now your job.

    For Debian users there are a few alternatives. You could just mix and match software from ‘stable’ and ‘testing’. That is not recommended, but everyone does it. Second thing: Just install Debian testing and you get a rolling distro. That’s what I do and it works great. Well, during the ‘freeze’ for the next version you will experience some delays until they figure out some library updates and requirements. But that’s alright.