Debian on brand-new hardware
Running Debian as my daily system on a laptop newer than Debian's kernel, and rescuing my main workstation before the school year.
Context & objective
I use Debian every day, on a new ASUS Vivobook S16 (Ryzen AI, OLED) that keeps Windows 11 alongside, and on my main workstation. Both needed work before Epitech started.
What I built
- Laptop: an unattended Windows 11 install, then a Debian dual-boot with GRUB, Secure Boot and hibernation.
- Wi-Fi on the laptop by building the driver from a newer kernel’s sources.
- Workstation rescue: fixed a KDE boot failure (a stray
singleparameter in GRUB) and untangled APT, which was blocked by the Python 3.14 transition and by leftover testing sources.
Next: a small Python daemon to bring back the touchpad edge gestures (volume, brightness) that the laptop has on Windows.
Challenges
- Very new hardware: the touchpad and audio still misbehave on Debian’s kernel.
- A display fault: a corrupted band on the OLED screen under Linux, which I traced to a hardware fault rather than a driver bug. The laptop went back for exchange.
- Unwinding drift: bringing a system that had slid towards Debian testing back to a clean state without breaking it further.
What I learned
TODO(content): in your own words. Raw material: backporting a kernel driver, telling a hardware fault from a driver bug, why mixing Debian releases breaks things.