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Forced into using Ubuntu... 18.04.... (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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When I decided to switch to using Linux as my primary OS I had Artix and Debian dreams (personal and work/enterprise) but the refurb dell 5420 rugged I got had other ideas... Tried many distros and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was the only one that worked without nomodeset. (Funnily enough that's the version Dell officially supports who would have thought..)

Guess I now have a year to figure out how to get these darn Intel GPU drivers to work on an up to date distro before I stop getting security patches..

(Still gonna run KDE tho)

My business VPSs are running Debian with windows server VMs and this laptop's main purpose is gonna be SSH connections to those anyway but still.

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[–] 7 points 22 hours ago* (1 child)

Weird. I recently installed the modern KDE version of fedora 44 to an old Dell core 2 duo laptop from 2007-8. Installed just fine. It has no business running it however. Far too heavy. If I'm looking at the right one this is a decadish newer laptop?! Must be some odd bit of proprietaryness getting in the way. Not unheard of with dell or HP.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

    Yep. Intel i5-8350U from 2017 in this case.

    Seems like a fairly common issue that I can't find a solution to. Intel iGPUs around that generation just not playing nice with the newer drivers so you have to add "nomodeset" in grub to bypass them. But then you're stuck not being able to adjust display brightness (horrible when you have a sunlight readable display glowing with the power of a thousand suns) or run anything that requires a gpu. (Tried accessing my foundryVTT instance and got 1fps and web videos would barely decode at all) everything else pretty much worked fine if you ignored all the boot errors lol (without nomodeset in grub the OS crashes within minutes if not seconds)

    I'm sure there's a way to make it work but that's a future me problem. I just needed a rugged thin client since I can't rely on local hardware on a sailboat anyway.

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