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Okay. Please help me as I ask COMPUTER BABBY QUESTIONS.

I have a Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 (AMD).
It has a 256 GB HD. That's too small. I want to buy a new, bigger one. I have a sense the good hard drives these days are "M.2".

Lenovo's specs page

lenovo.com/ca/en/p/laptops/thi

doesn't say anything about "M.2". It says the hd is "PCIe".

I run "lshw" to see what's on the computer. It says "NVMe".

How do I find out the bestest fastest aftermarket drive Canada Computers carries that my computer will support

I only understand computation as the MANIPULATION OF ABSTRACT PLATONIC FORMS. I do not understand this realm where computers are "physical objects" you manipulate with "screwdrivers". I would prefer to use Math to translate my thoughts directly into action, as if I am casting magic spells

Okay thank you all for explaining. I have one more question: Is there actually, like, a difference between drive vendors. Like if I pick WD vs Samsung vs Lexar (vs… "crucial"?!) will it ever make any difference

Okay. So I think I have my plans for the hard drive complete. Now here's the shedpainty question:

The old drive has Ubuntu 24.04 on it. I hate it.

Should I trade down to Debian?

Or should I trade up to Pop!_OS?

Will I regret either of these? Will either one, if I just go get a standard usb key installation, cause driver problems with my AMD chipset or secure boot or whatever other junk Lenovo has on board?

Okay I have more computer build babby questions

I got a hard drive

But I've been warned it's one that runs hot

So I think I want a thermal "strip", which is apparently a heatsink that fits into smol spaces like a laptop

I google

amazon.ca/Deal4GO-Heatsink-5B4

This looks good! Oh, they're out of stock. Except wait, why doesit say "replacement"?

I watch installation instructions

youtu.be/8sm1ScVUHqY?t=108

Is there a hd heatsink strip in my friggin laptop already?? (1/2)

www.amazon.caAmazon.ca

I only want to open up the laptop once. Trying to decide if I should

(a) just open it and assume there's already a heatstrip

(b) I poke around and there's lots of weird blue polymer strips that seem to do the same thing? It wouldn't be that expensive to just buy one and have it around if it turns out there's not one in there already…

amazon.ca/s?k=m.2+thermal+pad&

(c) set the computer preemptively on fire, so that the hard drive can't be the one to overheat it

(2/2)

www.amazon.caAmazon.ca

Update: Fuck this town i'm out

Alright one last shedpainting question. Should I install Debian Stable or Debian Testing. Text replies welcome

@mcc my argument for stable is as follows:

- it is very stable, especially if you avoid pinning things or installing too many weird .deb files by hand
- if you need a newer/recent version of software it's fairly likely that it's not in testing either, so either way you'll end up installing it by hand
- any issues you do run across have very likely been seen/documented by someone else

(my read is that you do not enjoy Fucking Around With Linux which colors my recommendation.)

@d6 Yeah I uh there is a kind of Fucking Around I want to do and I need a stable base system so I can Fuck Around with the things I want to Fuck Around with instead of fucking around with like, I don't fucking know, my app switcher

@mcc right i would describe this as "i enjoy planned fucking around" and "i want to avoid unplanned fucking around"

@d6 @mcc *so long as all your hardware is old enough that geriatric software will actually run on it, and so long as your software is all old enough to be happy running on geriatric platform software. If that's not the case then you get flipped around and a stable distro is the opposite of stable.

Josh Simmons

@d6 @mcc e.g. if you buy a new laptop you likely want to be running the latest or near the latest kernel just so it actually like, works. There's usually some number of small functionality enablement that needs to happen. Then if you want to run new software (like e.g. steam games) you need graphics drivers that aren't from the middle ages. And any applications you want to use, you likely want the latest version of those too. (Debian stable has blender 3.4, for example, current upstream is 4.3)

@dotstdy @d6 I have a 1 year old laptop. The Ubuntu 24.04 kernel has had some bugs over the last year actually but now seems to be working, so if I can get this kernel in stable I'll take it. I have no intent of installing blender from .deb, that would be a Flatpak. The only piece of .deb software I want up to date is Firefox (but I'd be happy with Firefox ESR, honestly)

@d6 @mcc flatpack sandboxes apps, so you trade these things kinda working on ye old distro for random stuff being annoying or broken inside the sandbox. /shrug but ime any notion of "stable" distros actually being stable for daily desktop use isn't really how it ends up working out unless you have very specific desires.

@dotstdy @d6 i'm already effectively doing this on ubuntu with snap and it's fine. except for not getting image previews in open dialogs. which i *think* is a snap specific issue.

@mcc @d6 indeed that sounds like a snap problem that you'll likely also have in flatpack. I'd just be prepared for a different set of issues for flatpack v.s. snap :P (ultimately though, it'll all be fine enough either way, I'd just generally recommend the complete opposite, rolling distros being more stable for desktop use than stable distros are ime)

@dotstdy @d6 @mcc On new hardware not (well) supported by Debian stable's kernel, I usually run Debian stable with a more recent kernel (either from testing or hand-compiled)