Re: Dell Precision 3570 - Debian instead of Ubuntu
Hi,
The new laptop just arrived and I had a first look what the people did
at Dell or Canonical:
After switching it on the first time, I was asked to enter / configure
WLAN, username, password, hostname, keyboard layout, time zone. It also
let me create a recovery USB stick. After a reboot I now could just use
it. But of course I had a look behind the scenes...:
It came with Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS and Gnome 3.36.8 running on X11.
The internal disk is formatted as
- 891 MB EFI mounted at /boot/efi
- 8.6 GB FAT not mounted, disks reports it as "Microsoft Reserved"
- 503 GB Ext4 Root Partition
The USB stick I used as recovery medium got formatted as
- 4 GB 0x00 (Bootable) ISO 9660 mounted at
/media/<username>/DellRecoveryMedia
- 4.1 MB EFI FAT not mounted
- and some GB free space
After installing Synaptic I found out that there are some more Origins
with installed packages as listed here:
local/main (dell.archive.canonical.com):
oem-fix-misc-cnl-tlp-estar-conf, 5.0.3.4, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
This package carrys agressive policy to pass energy-star, and also
some blacklist for problematic devices
oem-somerville-factory-meta, 20.04ubuntu9, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
It installs packages needed to support this hardware fully.
oem-somerville-factory-paras-35-meta, 20.04ubuntu3, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
It installs packages needed to support this hardware fully.
(factory)
oem-somerville-meta, 20.04ubuntu9, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
This is a metapackage for Somerville platform. It installs packages
needed to support this hardware fully.
oem-somerville-paras-35-meta, 20.04ubuntu3, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
This is a metapackage for Somerville Paras-35 platform. It installs
packages needed to support this hardware fully.
oem-somerville-partner-archive-keyring, 20.04ubuntu2, maintainer
commercial.engineering(at)canonical.com:
Somerville project keyring.
local/universe (dell.archive.canonical.com):
tlp, 1.3.1-2, maintainer ubuntu-devel-discuss(at)lists.ubuntu.com:
Save battery power on laptops
(Description)
tlp-rdw, 1.3.1-2, maintainer ubuntu-devel-
discuss(at)lists.ubuntu.com:
Radio device wizard
(Description)
focal/universe (dell.archive.canonical.com):
tlp, 1.3.1-2, maintainer ubuntu-devel-discuss(at)lists.ubuntu.com:
tlp-rdw, 1.3.1-2, maintainer ubuntu-devel-
discuss(at)lists.ubuntu.com:
stable/main (dl.google.com):
google-chrome-stable is installed
Now my thoughts are:
- Chrome not necessary...
- tlp, tlp-rdw: also in Debian Testing (Bookworm), but with higher
version number (1.5.0-1), but also with a different maintainer
(raphael.halimi@gmail.com)
oem-fix-misc-cnl-tlp-estar-conf: does it make sense to keep this
package?
oem-somerville-*: could make sense to keep...
--> Can I re-install these packages after installing Debian Testing by
adding and enabling these Dell repositories?
Under /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/ there are some files that might be
corresponding to these repos and maybe I should keep them:
ubuntu-keyring-2008-oem.gpg
ubuntu-keyring-2008-oem.key.gpg
ubuntu-keyring-2020-oem.gpg
and under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ there are:
focal-oem.list
oem-somerville-paras-35-meta.list
But: as far as I remember, one should not mix Debian packages /repos
with Ubuntu packages / repos, but I might work.
What do you think?
(Of course I could just keep it as it is, but I'd prefer having a
Debian-only setup in our family across all devices.)
(Fun fact also mentioned: on the Dell website for the laptop there is a
Q&A section where is stated that the laptop comes without any OS pre-
installed but one could install Ubuntu on it while when asking their
chat the answer was that it's not allowed to sell computers without any
OS installed (at least here in Switzerland)...)
Have a nice day,
Bernd
PS: Please add me CC since I'm currently not subscribed to this list.
Thanks.
On Mon, 2022-11-28 at 10:04 +0100, B.M. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm going to buy a Dell Precision 3570 laptop in the next couple of
> weeks.
> Since it's a Build Your Own device, I can order it with Ubuntu 20.04
> LTS pre-
> installed instead of paying for an never used Win 11 :-)
>
> Since all our other computers are happily running Debian, I'd like to
> replace
> this Ubuntu by Debian Testing (later Bookworm). I've already decided
> to run it
> on a single btrfs partition and learn something about subvolumes... I
> assume
> the machine should work well - but who knows? How would you proceed?
>
> a) leave it running Ubuntu forever
> b) replace Ubuntu by Debian, fiddling around issues if there are any
> later
> c) resize the partition, install Debian side-by-side, check than if
> anything
> works as expected
> d) analyze the installed system (how?) to find out any special
> configs etc.
> before replacing Ubuntu by Debian
> e) other...
>
> Thank you for your ideas.
>
> Have a nice day,
> Bernd
>
> PS: Please cc me, since I'm not regularly subscribed to the list
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