Grinding Halt

Yes – my apologies for the long drought between postings. Along with the usual “writer’s block” issues with which I invariably struggle, I’ve been having technical issues with my laptop. I made the tragicomic mistake of updating my Ubuntu OS with the latest release … which, of course, completely fouled up my connection to the usb external HDD on my router.

Understanding that this is most definitely a “first-world problem,” it did make working with the laptop much less helpful and convienient than it should be. I decided to rectify the situation by trying a different form of Linux on my tower and laptop. Having chosen Debian 10, I installed it on my desktop tower first. It was simple, but took a few hours to download all the relevant files … however, once I finished the installation, there was no need for a further update post-installation … samba worked like a charm … in short, a complete success.

I thought “Getting Debian to work on my laptop should be a breeze.” Well … yeah. No.

I went through much the same installation process as on the desktop … the OS seemed to install okay, but when I tried to boot, it gave me a pleasant “firmware not loaded” error. So okay … fine. I tried several different ways to download the proper files in the recovery console. No soap. So I downloaded a version of the netinstall image with the proper firmware files and tried to install again. It worked exactly as the previous attempt had … which is to say, not at all.

I hoped the third attempt would be the charm. I re-installed with the “unofficial” netinstall image, and I had another usb stick with the firmware program ready to install … so, instead of booting normally after the installation process, I went into the recovery console and installed what I hoped against hope was the proper firmware file for my system … I rebooted and (metaphorically) crossed my fingers …

At the risk of spoiling the surprise — I’m typing this very blog post on my laptop. The laptop is working better than it ever has, and the networking (samba) is trouble-free … at least, thus far.

Now that the “Technichal Dark Night Of The Soul” is over, perhaps I will be able to share more of my ramblings with you in the future (or at the very least, I’ll have no technological reasons not to). Everybody stay safe and stay healthy.