I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for a couple of years now, first on a slightly older Dell Inspiron 15. Last year I upgraded to an Inspiron 15 7510 with i7-11800H and RTX3050. Since purchasing this laptop I’ve used Manjaro, Debian 11, Pop OS, Void Linux, Fedora Silverblue (37 & 38) and now Debian 12. I need to reinstall soon since I’ve stuffed up my NVIDIA drivers trying to install CUDA and didn’t realise that they changed the default swap size to 1GB.

I use this laptop for everything - development in C/C++, dart/flutter, nodejs and sometimes PHP. I occasionally play games on it through Proton and sometimes need to re-encode videos using Handbrake. I need some amount of reliability since I also use this for University.

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing. But I have been reading about BTRFS and snapshots which make me think I can have an up to date system and reliability (by rebooting into a snapshot). What’s everyone’s perspective on this, is there anything major I should keep an eye on?

Should also note I use GNOME, vscode, Firefox and will need MATLAB to be installed, if there is anything to do with those that is problematic on Arch?

Edit: I went with Arch thanks everyone for the advice

  • Ban DHMO 🇦🇺@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The Debian 12 installer creates only 1GB of swap by default which I believe was new behaviour from when I install Debian 11 the first time around. Apparently it’s to make it easier for server users but what a pain. Anyway the easiest way to fix that is to just reinstall, since most of my stuff lives on Nextcloud and Gitea it shouldn’t be too hard

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      I still don’t understand what the problem is, but if you want more swap just get more swap. You can resize the partitions if you want but you can also just add swap as files instead of partitions.

      • Create a file of any size you want with dd.
      • Format it as swap with mkswap.
      • Mount it with swapon.
      • Add it to your /etc/fstab so it mounts automatically:

      /swapfile swap defaults 0 0

    • superkret@feddit.de
      2·
      1 year ago

      So fixing it is literally just what you’d have to do before reinstalling anyway. Reduce your root partition from a live system, increase swap partition, re-initialize swap. Done.

      Also, the Debian installer tells you how big a swap partition it creates and asks you if that is what you want twice.

      • Ban DHMO 🇦🇺@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Are you talking about the Graphical Installer?

        I’ve installed it on other machines since and it only confirms stuff for you if you decide to deviate from the defaults

        • superkret@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh yeah, I always use the graphical expert installer. If the normal installer defaults to 1GB of swap without telling you, that’s pretty bad.
          1GB swap is pointless IMO. Either make the swap space twice your RAM or don’t bother.

          Still don’t know how that could fuck up drivers though. On a normal system, I don’t even use swap anymore.