Linux!

[packbat]

So, you might not know this about us, but until - *checks date* - two weeks ago Friday, we were using Windows 7 as our OS.

"But Packbats!", someone might exclaim. "Windows 7 hasn't been supported since 2015! Hell, as of January, you couldn't even bribe Microsoft to keep your system limping along!"

And you'd be correct! Which is why you might not have known this about us, because "oh yeah, our primary computer, our connection to a world where being a queer trans plural furry is normal and unremarked upon, is running an OS so insecure that even Mozilla has given up on supporting it" seems like an irresponsible thing to say on the public network.

That is, until the day just under two weeks ago when we weren't running Win7 any more, because our laptop had stopped functioning and we couldn't figure out how to fix it.

So yeah. We're posting this from NixOS.

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NixOS is an odd choice for a complete Linux beginner, admittedly. There were a couple compelling reasons for us to use it, though.

First, we actually know a lot of people who use NixOS specifically. If we're gonna make a run at a completely new operating system, we wanna be able to ask for help - and we've already asked for a lot of help.

Second, it sounds interesting. Like, there's so often that we've installed something and uninstalled something and just ... wondered, what's there and what's not. Wondered what pieces are hanging out still in the system. Honestly, wondered what's even installed - like, there's definitely some random bullshit that we wanted to try once, in an afternoon, that was still sitting in C:/Program Files/ for no defensible reason. Being able to be deliberate about what's going on, to be able to wipe X from our machine without wondering if it'll break Y somewhere else, is really appealing.

And honestly, the NixOS part hasn't been the part that's been an adventure.

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In 2015, a Dell Optiplex 9020 was manufactured. Presumably shortly afterwards, or maybe before, it was sold to a university near where we live. In 2023, that university surplused it, put it up for sale, advertising an Intel i5 CPU running at 3.3 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and no hard drive. That's how Evergreen, which is what we are now calling this machine, came into our hands, and when our laptop stopped working, we stopped procrastinating on getting it working, a process in which we were surprised three times.

First, by our no-HD computer having a hard drive in it. We'd just come back from the computer parts store with a 2 TB 2.5" laptop SSD (which does not sound like an amount of data that should be possible, but here we are), and we had the case open and were looking to install it. There was a plastic adapter already inside for attaching 2.5" laptop SSDs to a 3.5" desktop HD bracket, one that held two hard drives, and apparently the people responsible for surplusing Evergreen did not find the 500-GB Seabring drive mounted to the bottom side of that thing.

Second, by a graphics card. An actual graphics card, not an integrated one. We'd been futzing about with the password reset jumper when we realized that the DVI socket on the back was attached to something with its own fan, and it was a graphics card. Maybe we can finally play Car Mechanic Simulator 2014!

Third - and we kicked ourselves for this one - by there not being any wifi card. Why did we think there would be a wifi card? It probably spent its whole life plugged into an Ethernet cable! But no wifi card meant no wifi Internet meant no way for us to download a NixOS install ISO.

...because yeah, we were going to make our own install media. Actually, we weren't, we were going to get one from a friend, but delays in the mail meant we got frustrated and tried to come up with our own plan for doing it. And after ruling out using a library machine, that meant ... well, using the only OS install media we had.

A Windows 7 install DVD.

So that was last night: installing Windows 7, so we could use Microsoft Internet Explorer to download the NixOS ISO and download Rufus 3.22, the last version that works on Win7. And that was this morning, buying a wifi card. And this afternoon was, unsurprisingly, walking to the library after all, because for some strange reason our wifi card didn't come with drivers for an OS that was discontinued eight years before its manufacture, so we had to download the files from the library and truck them back home to use.

Rube Goldberg though this scheme was, it worked. The NixOS installer was able to connect to the wifi card, which meant it could connect to the wifi, which meant it could do the install.

And then have one final surprise as the computer said "No boot media found." --because it was in Legacy mode and our install was UEFI. Changing that setting fixed it.

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So far, we have:

• Altered one config file so we could read ntfs drives.
• Used nix-shell to grab a file partition tool so we could turn our temporary Windows 7 ntfs drive (the 2 TB one) into a proper Linuxy ext4 drive.
• Used tune2fs to tell Linux that it doesn't need to save 5% of our now-storage 2 TB drive for root.
• Decided to hold off on moving home to the 2 TB drive, because it would mean messing with hardware-configuration.nix and we're tired.

We're tired. But we have a working computer.