Having previously tried with Desktop 2, and on the back of recent success with CodeQuest Laptop, I finally decided to try and brave testing Linux on Desktop 1 for the first time ever, to see how it would fare.
After all, as soon as I am forced to take it off Windows 10 (if something sufficiently bad comes along that means that all old machines absolutely need to be taken off the internet immediately - and even then, I can buy some more time by just disconnecting its USB wifi dongle (more on that in a moment), then it'd be good to know that I can safely do this with that machine.
Of course, there's a LOT of water to pass under the bridge with this one first... As in - tons of hardware upgrades + tweaks first (which may be somewhat familiar from prior posts in this series).
This update covers two things:
* 1) The immediate future hardware-upgrade needs of this system, which are still up in the air somewhat
* 2) Tonight's "failed" first experiment running it under Linux
PART 1 - Hardware Issues Roadmap / Wishlist
While it's been great finally getting this box back from the dead again, there are unfortunately a whole bunch of issues that I need to resolve with it). Among the list of things I need / want to do to prepare this machine for its second life:
* 1) It is almost completely *OUT* of storage space. Yes, I've managed to completely fill all 3 drives, such that each one has less than 100GB free space now (i.e. one has just under 10GB, the next under 20GB, and the last 90-something). So yes... that is the top priority. (Hence, the breakdown over a year ago was actually good timing, as it forced me to swap it out for the newer one with a lot of free diskspace which has given me some breathing room for a while! But... this is an issue I will now have to look into again seriously this year to set things up well for the coming few years)
Anyway, the options I'm considering here include:
* a) Clone the "data" hard drives to larger + newer disks, giving myself headroom there for a bunch more years, and allowing my entire photo collection to be accessible from an easy-to-interact-with machine (instead of stuck on backup drives only, which I don't want to stress too much)
* b) Clone the NVME SSD to two separate drives:
1) An external HDD for archival storage (ideally alongside the two removed smaller old drives), and then
2) As an extra internal SSD (to preserve the ability to dual-bool Windows)
* c) Either with the existing NVME SSD, OR by adding an extra SSD (via the spare power cables I see, but spare SATA cables in that bay still "Missing in Action"), Linux will get its own dedicated drive too! Then I can dual boot that machine with both setups, and maintain the best of both worlds!
* d) If I spot the extra SATA headers giving support to the full 8 that the motherboard promises, OR get one of those PCI cards to provide access to a bunch of external-drives-in-a-caddy thingies, then I can alleviate my storage woes that way instead!
* 2) I really want to replace the noisy-as stock cooler fan ("AMD Wraith Prism"), that has annoying me since day 1 of owning the system. Heck, I should've just taken it straight back to the shop and asked them to replace it for me right back then... but it was a bit on the heavy side to have to haul out of the house and back down to that shop again 😅
Anyway, that fan makes its presence *FELT* + *KNOWN* - Before I adjusted all the fan speeds, it would be constantly revving up and down like a stupid bass-heavy racecar doing circuits at a local speedway, while also making a lot of rather short lived but intense "gushing wind" noises. *VERY VERY ANNOYING*!!!
* 3) Speaking of fans, there are still a bunch that need a bunch more cleaning out (e.g. I still can't quite locate the way to access the two blasted front fans, which I'm absolutely sure have totally clogged filters...), and may in fact the be source of a bunch of annoying buzzing-resonance noises that I also want to fix.
* 4) I'd like to replace the USB Wifi dongle with a nice PCI card that does the same thing. Again, this is something I wanted from day one even before I got the system, but is not something I got with it, as the motherboard doesn't have it like Desktop 2 does! Also, the annoying dongle has a tendency under Windows to eventually start having problems on resumption from sleep after keeping the system up for a few weeks, requiring an annoying "unplug and reseat" operation whenever it failed...
In short: There are lots of hardware issues I also need to address with this machine
Then of course, there's the larger problem of how I can solve the "device dataset syncing" problem I now have with my two desktops! (I've largely avoided the worst of these issues so far by religiously transferring anything *new* these days to Desktop 2 as the "master copy", and constantly shifting stuff off Desktop 1's "staging" folder and then copying other project files as appropriate back to Desktop 2, to ensure that that one always has the most update-to-date current state)...
BUT there;s also the ongoing problem of how I can make this setup work better, including maybe having some more resilient centralised backup storage for my most important files (e.g. photo collection, and various art/work project collections). With all the AI scraping and other corporate / nationstate crap out there these days, keeping all on fully locally managed servers / machines is very much an ongoing concern + priority for me too! Hence, the issue of whether to set up a new NAS, jerry rig together a prototype, OR to now just add extra drives to this machine and run it as my new homeserver (or maybe via a VM), are all tricky issues I keep pondering over these days, such that I've somehow found myself doing less "software" stuff in my freetime recently, with most of the focus instead being on solving my technical setup for the next 5-10 years!
Part 2 - First Trial with Linux
Well bugger... turns out my attempt to try Linux on Desktop 1 backfired spectacularly, but not in the usual ways!
Unlike on my two other current machines, this one had no boot problems! (I have to admit though, that that's largely because I had it assembled for me *clean*, and had to install everything on there myself from scratch, and so... well... I just chose straight up to not enable Secure Boot ever, knowing full well that one day I'd want to do this... especially knowing all the pain involved having run into massive issues with my HP Laptop when I last tried setting up a dual boot over a decade ago)
Heck, even the slightly tempermental USB WIFI dongle worked! (And that thing had issues on Windows where after a few weeks, it would suddenly fail on wake from sleep, and need kicking off + reseating)
No... everything chugged along very smoothly. The boot screens were picking up the Motherboard Logo, etc. and all was looking nice and fast + spiffy, until:
*weird screen with postage-stamp tiles of the MOBO logo appear for a few seconds*
Oof... what was that?!
Then it happened several more times between trying to connect the wifi, and just managing to bring up a terminal, and run "sudo dmesg"... and then just the terminal remained while the background stopped coming back.
Ouch... kwin_wayland had segfaulted in "libgallium" 🤦♂️
Doh! It seems Wayland didn't like my old graphics card (which may or may not also have some elderly health issues), when trying to use it via the Nouveau drivers I'm guessing... But, you really can't try proper proprietary drivers until you've actually installed to disk! Doh!
Catch-22 here. Guess I'll have to focus on dealing with the storage setup first!
EDIT: Seems that "random crash" issues with Wayland + Nvidia 1080/1080ti issues are pretty well known... 😒
e.g.
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