During that phase, I began to worry that I had gone too far by buying a slim fancy device without an ethernet port, but I survived.
I am sorry I can’t really document it completely here, but only more fiddling until I found the right combination that would recognize one USB as the boot media and one USB as the supplemental driver files allowed me to proceed. Then I went through a couple of abortive installation attempts because of the aforementioned wireless drivers, which needed to be loaded from a second USB stick. So, I had to fidget about a bit with the UEFI/BIOS settings to get the Dell to want to boot from the stick, but eventually made it happen.
Then, I prepared a USB boot stick to install Debian 8 (Jessie). I am liking Dell from the hardware perspective.
But, in spite of my nerves, popping open and disassembling my brand new laptop was a piece of cake, and it went back together just as good as new. The 9265 is supported natively in the kernel, whereas the 9260 requires a download of Intel proprietary drivers. Due to a bit of carelessness, I picked a 9260 instead of the 9265 model.
Thanks to Dell, because they put a wonderful service manual online and don’t mind users operating on their own hardware (unlike the fruit-themed gadget company). And also that Intel wireless cards worked easily with Linux. I learned that the Dell-rebranded Broadcom wireless card was not being supported, except in bleeding edge kernels, and was not very good anyway. So, I committed to putting Debian on the machine as its sole operating system, and began Googling to get ready. Seriously, why would anyone voluntarily remain in that depressing environment if they had the possibility of escape? But two minutes in Windows 10 erased any of those doubts. Since this XPS laptop was brand new with the latest technology, I have to confess that for a moment or two I even considered leaving Windows on the machine and using it in dual boot mode. My working laptop recently has been a leftover 2010 Macbook Pro running Debian only, and it has no real issues, but it is running hot and noisy. In the past, I have usually put Linux onto either very standard or slightly older hardware, and didn’t have FEAR that it would not work. Still, the computer I bought was NOT a Developer’s Edition, but a new Windows 10 machine.
In recent years, I converted from the Fedora sect to become a Debian adherent, and I have been very satisfied with that choice. In Linux, I can do what I want to do, rather than simply obey the instructions of other OSes. Although I have occasionally strayed away, for most of the time, Linux computers have formed the core of my computing infrastructure.
I should also mention that dating back to the fin-de-siècle, I have been a Linux user. I had been following Dell primarily due to their Linux support on via the Developer Series, and had been tempted on many occasions in the past. Please skip over if you are looking for actual educational material…Īs tweeted earlier, a Pi day discount tempted me into the purchase of a 13″ Dell XPS (model 9350). I will try to make it brief, by my standards □ This is not in any way an objective post, but I am just blowing off steam and letting my opinions fly. Well, this is off topic for the theme of the blog, but I felt the urge to record an expurgated version of my recent installation of Linux on a new Dell XPS 13 (9350), for the potential edification of the populace.