Repair or replace laptop?

[DoYouKubuntu]

Playing around is one of the joys of Linux! I frequently try other distros to see how the compare with Kubuntu. I recently did the latest Ubuntu. Before that was KWheezy, and before that was Mandriva and SUSE, and PCLinuxOS. Always as a guest OS, except for KWheezy. In every case I've returned to Kubuntu because it is most faithful to KDE.

I tend to only try other distros when I get a new computer, i.e., I have to wipe windows off of it anyway, so might as well try several distros and see which I like. And then I [almost] always end up with Kubuntu. One of my other laptops, an older HP, was an exception--I kept Bodhi on that and really liked it. But once it died I was back to Kubuntu on all my computers, including my Chromebook.

Since the System76 I'm getting will already have Linux installed on it, and because I'm not in a very inquisitive mood right now, I will probably skip the 'try other distros' step of getting a new computer. Of course I will be installing Kubuntu, since it ships with Ubuntu.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I recall being impressed by the out-of-the-box experience with my Gazelle. Not sure how much of that was Ubuntu or System76 or both.

So far all of my contact with the folks at S76 has been really good. I'm anxiously looking forward to seeing how my first computer from them impresses me!

I played around, but it wasn't long before aptitude install kubuntu-desktop. I re-partitioned at the next major release.

Yeah...I'm assuming I'll be repartitioning mine. Does anyone have any thoughts on what S76 told me, i.e., that it's no longer recommended that the drive be partitioned into separate /, /home, etc.? I've tried to make that make sense to me, but it just isn't.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Good idea, DYK. You can see how they set up the UEFI+GPT+ESP thingy.

Compare to the stuff in SteveRiley's subforum posts. Et cetera.
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forumd...EFI-assistance
Doesn't hurt to do so, out of curiosity, if nothing else. And it sounds like if you have questions, you can call them about it.

Thanks for the info, Qq. I'll definitely take a look at it.

[SteveRiley]

SDoes anyone have any thoughts on what S76 told me, i.e., that it's no longer recommended that the drive be partitioned into separate /, /home, etc.? I've tried to make that make sense to me, but it just isn't.

Eh, do what you want. I've never used separate partitions for / and /home because I hate messing around with resizing in case I guess wrong. My /home continuously updates to a Debian server in my closet datacenter which in turn backs up to an Amazon S3 bucket. So whenever I need to rebuild, I wipe the entire drive, reinstall, then rsync the directory back to my laptop.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Eh, do what you want. I've never used separate partitions for / and /home because I hate messing around with resizing in case I guess wrong. My /home continuously updates to a Debian server in my closet datacenter which in turn backs up to an Amazon S3 bucket. So whenever I need to rebuild, I wipe the entire drive, reinstall, then rsync the directory back to my laptop.

I'm just so used to partitioning according to my long...long...standing scheme, it's weird not having that. (Oh, I'm installing Kubuntu on the System76 right now--it arrived about an hour ago.) What I've always found is that by having the OS on its own partition, and then user files and data on their own partitions, it's a snap to upgrade without losing anything, even if I want to format / to get rid of all the old crud.

[MoonRise]

I bet you're having fun!! How does it look and run?

[GreyGeek]

...
Since the System76 I'm getting will already have Linux installed on it, and because I'm not in a very inquisitive mood right now, I will probably skip the 'try other distros' step of getting a new computer. Of course I will be installing Kubuntu, since it ships with Ubuntu.

This will get you KDE 4.13.2 on your Ubuntu 14.04 installation.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kde-standard kubuntu-desktop

and select "KDE Plasma Workspace" at the login screen.

IF, by chance, KDE is already installed, you can update to KDE 4.13.2 using

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[SteveRiley]

Mixing Ubuntu and Kubuntu can be...painful. I'd recommend wiping the included Ubuntu first.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks for the feedback. It's humming along running Kubuntu now. I used Synaptic to install the Kubuntu components I wanted, and so far it's looking mighty good. I personally haven't had issues [that I can recall] installing K on top of U, so I'm going to leave it like that for now.

It's very, very odd only having one partition. Weird.

The laptop feels heavier than the HP dv7 it's replacing. Other than that, they're exactly the same size. One cool thing on the S76 is the back-lit keyboard. I like that.

If I had to choose one word to describe my impression of it so far, it'd be: quality. It just feels high quality.

[GreyGeek]

... It's very, very odd only having one partition. Weird.

During the first 10 years I used Linux I used to go through the ritual of using separate partitions for /boot / (root), /home and swap. Resizing because of wrong choices was a pain. Then I started using two partitions, / (root) and swap, where swap was twice the size of my total RAM. When I got a box with 2GB of RAM I was creating a 4GB swap. About the time I switched from Mandriva to Kubuntu I read somewhere that swap wasn't necessary if one had enough cores and more than 4GB of RAM, a far cry from the old 512MB and later 1GB. With my 6GB of RAM the rule would dictate 12GB of SWAP. That's a big chunk. If someone had a box with 8 or 16 or 32GB of RAM the swap size would be ridiculous. I decided with Kubuntu 9.04 in 2009 to forego a swap drive and haven't missed it since.

... The laptop feels heavier than the HP dv7 it's replacing. Other than that, they're exactly the same size. One cool thing on the S76 is the back-lit keyboard. I like that.

If I had to choose one word to describe my impression of it so far, it'd be: quality. It just feels high quality.

That's exactly the impression my son has about his System76 Gazelle.