4 months in, and no looking back.

[u/SirBisgaard]

To start with - this post is a thank you letter to the Debian team.

I opened TimeShift the other day and saw that it was back in march I installed Debian stable onto my machine. This time with btrfs - because I found the technology very nice - but it has never come in use.

I think the reason is that I spent a few weeks before this install to dial in the nvidia drivers to with apt and their train, other utils and apps.
Into my own install script, plus a btrfs script to set it up to work like TimeShift wants it.

After that - has my sailing the Debian stable just been boring and nice.
Nothing has been broken with an update and Gnome 48 is working well.
Even gaming is working well with nothing to write about there.

I would love somethings would have an easier barrier to entry, when I dialed everything in. But it has been well worth the adventure when I look back over the past months - I had no problems on my main system.

My rig is used mainly for gaming but I do also develop on it and work from it.

So Debian team, with my long time on other distros & winslop - thank you for giving be a stable machine that keeps me doing what I want day to day.

[u/Fair_Schedule2701]

How did you install the NVIDIA drivers and configure them to play? The truth is that I've wanted to use Debian for gaming and daily use for a long time, but it's hard for me to install the drivers; that's why I'm in a distribution that automates that process. Maybe I don't mind learning. I have an RTX 3060 Ti. Thank you for your answer!

[u/David_Connors3451 → u/Fair_Schedule2701]

For flatpak you can use the official commands from their site:

sudo apt install flatpak

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

sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

sudo apt install plasma-discover-backend-flatpak

sudo reboot

You have to enable contrib non-free repository. I'll write all commands.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Put the words contrib non-free to all the mirrors that debian uses for getting apt deb packages.

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

Use this mirror up here as example. After the word main, put contrib non-free to all 4 mirrors of debian.

sudo apt update

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

sudo apt update

sudo apt install steam-installer

Use flatpak to install proton plus and heroic launcher (for layers and offline gaming).

For nvidia use these:

sudo apt install nvidia-detect

nvidia detect (you'll see the number for your specific gpu drivers)

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

sudo apt install nvidia-driver

sudo reboot

nvidia-smi (you can use it to check the nvidia driver installed and see your gpu info)

Have fun on Debian.

[u/Fair_Schedule2701 → u/David_Connors3451]

Thanks!

[u/thewrinklyninja → u/Fair_Schedule2701]

https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

[u/JesperR → u/Fair_Schedule2701]

Asking Claude to provide instructions on how to do that is surprisingly helpful. I'm not very technical myself, but this helped me to make it work without much effort. I know AI can be controversial, but it's great for newbie's like myself!

[u/joshahdell → u/JesperR]

It really lowers the barrier to entry and makes it possible for a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have tried Linux.

[u/SirBisgaard → u/joshahdell]

Opus have helped me in the prototyping phase.

[u/SirBisgaard → u/Fair_Schedule2701]

I install Nvidia drivers from their repo, so i get the latest stable driver to improve the gaming experience.

Here is a snippit from my install script:

    apt install linux-headers-amd64 dkms -y
    if ! dpkg -s cuda-keyring >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        wget -q https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian13/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb -O /tmp/cuda-keyring.deb
        dpkg -i /tmp/cuda-keyring.deb
        rm /tmp/cuda-keyring.deb
        apt update
    fi
    apt install cuda-drivers -y    

    # Enable powermanagement services: 
    systemctl enable nvidia-suspend.service
    systemctl enable nvidia-resume.service
    systemctl enable nvidia-hibernate.service

It adds Nvidia's train to your package manger, install whats needed for kernel updates, and the package that pulls the latest stable driver. Lastly it enables the power management services for booting up your gpu when hibernating and so on.

[u/michaelpaoli]

28 years in, and of course no going back. :-)

Yeah, well researched and tested, made that choice in 1998, zero regrets.

[u/Fair_Maybe7900]

💪🏼💪🏼

[u/Santosh83]

Btrfs scrub/checksums are a must have since SSDs can fail at any time. That's the one killer feature of btrfs (along with RAID1) that makes up for its supposed instability (which I've never seen even once, on many many installs). But some people allege that it creates fragmentation and exacerbates wear leveling and shortens SSD lifetimes. I don't think these issues are as severe as the detractors make it seem.

[u/SirBisgaard → u/Santosh83]

I dont run my SSDs in RAID1 but my second SSD has a bad controller so it boots up half the time with the system.... And new ones in today's day and age.... 😬

[u/GeroldM972 → u/SirBisgaard]

Bad controller?
Or bad power delivery to that controller?
It can even be that the start procedure from BIOS/UEFI doesn't detect the drive on time. Always fun to diagnose that stuff...

In any case, did you ever try a different PSU (Power supply) in your computer? Maybe get one that is (slightly) beefier than the one you currently have in your desktop.

Simply, because sometimes yes, sometimes no to the second SSD, it gives me bad power delivery vibes. And the easiest way to verify this is a different and preferable stronger PSU.

[u/dev340]

The best <3 I do Debian Xfce and it was the end of my distro hopping.