Re: Debian installation

[Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org>]

Good Day,

Harold Hartley <wheelie207@ownmail.net>
> I have it installed but connection seems slow and my WiFi
> adapter doesn’t work with it.  The booting shows it could not
> raise network on boot, but it does work.  I also noticed that
> Debian 9.5 is running an older kernel where my other Linux
> boxes are running the newest.

Let's rephrase, the system has /some/ network, but poor support
of the card, due to the older kernel perhaps.  If you wish to
rule out poor kernel support, you can install a later one from
backports.  Instructions are documented below to make use of
that distribution channel:

	https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#_updates_and_backports

Surely commands like the following ones should install you a
recent kernel once you modified your /etc/apt/sources.list file
like on the document:

	apt update
	apt install -t stretch-backport linux-image-amd64 \
	    linux-headers-amd64

It may also come from missing firmware, like previously with the
installer, in which case you can also attempt an install of
/firmware-linux-nonfree/ from the same repository, and see if
the behavior is much better after a reboot (or use the
/firmware/ package matching your Ethernet card if you wish your
system to remain relatively frugal).

To convince yourself slowness comes from the network card, maybe
you should quantify transfer rates between your various boxes;
to ensure you don't have a bottleneck on the wireless section of
your network for instance.  You can copy big files with sftp for
instance, see what are the different rates between the various
machines.

Cheers,
-- 
Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org>