Apart from dd you can also go for Clonezilla or Rescuezilla. Both not super user friendly but once you get familiar with it makes backups and restore easy and fast for data and boot-loader.

/e/os is LineageOS + microG with an easy installer available or pre-installed purchase. The interface design is based on how iOS works, for example to move an icon on your phone long press one of the icons and wait till they all go wiggling and then drag the icon to where you want to have it.

I think /e/os is okay for folks who want a deGoogled phone that comes pre-installed.

In case anyone wants to try the /e/os easy installer on an old and supported phone, the /e/os easy install is really much more easy compared to plain LineageOS install.

Yes, gdebi :

• https://screenshots.debian.net/package/gdebi

Big fan of Cantata here :)

It was forked this year and the new developer kept using the original name.

• https://github.com/nullobsi/cantata

• https://flathub.org/apps/dog.unix.cantata.Cantata

Would using a blue-tooth keyboard make sense ?

Is this a desktop computer ? Two hard disks can make things more difficult. How about taking the power cord temporarily off from the larger disk, then install, and if it’s successful then turn it off and give the 2nd disk power again, and add that 2nd disk manually to the fstab as e.g. /opt/ as mount point.

:( Website of NGI :

• https://www.ngi.eu

And they appear to have a fresh Mastodon account hosted by the EU :

• https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EC_NGI

• 28 juli 2014 — What do you think about Linus Torvalds? I met Linus and his wife briefly at a party in 1999, and haven’t crossed paths since.

• Video with Linus giving RMS the Torvalds award in 1999 : https://youtube.com/watch?v=xnb_eFSnXFI

Wondering : Does duf do a better job than df with btrfs ?

• https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=duf
• https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

The discontinuation of neofetch development was big news for a lot of people, for example here : https://lemmy.ml/post/15051857 I’m happy for the software developer, now a farmer though :)

The developer maybe moved on to something new, like author of neofetch took up farming a few months ago.

Yes, go ahead and file the bug. And as others mentioned already, the custom screensaver modifications of XScreensaver like for LM may have bugs. The author of XScreensaver has been complaining about this several times.

• https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#gnome-screensaver

The bug you found looks similar to this one :

• https://linuxreviews.org/Xfce4-screensaver_0.1.9_Is_Released_With_A_Critical_Security_Fix

Unlocking a machine locked with Xfce’s screensaver xfce4-screensaver has long been a simple matter of turning two monitors on at the exact same time. That makes Xfce4-screensaver versions prior to 0.1.9 segfault and crash - leaving the machine unlocked. This very unfortunate Xfce bug #16102 has been open since October 29th 2019 and we have pointed fingers at it several times before. Xfce developer Sean Davis has finally closed this gaping security hole. He explained that the embarrassingly long delay before this security vulnerability was addressed was due to “real life conflicts” in a brief comment on March 22nd. He did not elaborate and we did not ask for further details since it is likely none of our business.

I think I’ve read somewhere that xrandr only works with Xorg and not with Wayland.

Simply install debian 12.5 again, the easiest choice.

Good choice.

Install linux mint, so I get ubuntu but without them throwing their subscription services down my throat. I’m unsure about other advantages, as ubuntu is debian based, maybe the more frequent program updates? Kernels are also updated more often than with debian as far as I know. Do you know of other advantages?

There’s LMDE, Linux Mint Debian version.

Go for FreeBSD: this might require a learning curve, because this is an OS I’ve never used. Are commands that different from debian?

Yes, commands are different (For example ifconfig and not ip. And watch on Linux is something different on FreeBSD) and you can expect several things to not work out of the box. Also, mounting removable devices is different. Documentation is very good though unless your reached a niche problem. I’d suggest to first toy around with FreeBSD in a VM (Qemu or VirtualBox) if you want to sneak preview it and learn more.

I guess KDE means using SDDM. Would this help ? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SDDM#Login_session_appears_on_an_unexpected_display

This appears to have solved the same problem for others :

• https://rileymacdonald.ca/2018/04/02/ubuntu-resolved-e-package-cache-file-corrupted/

• sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

• sudo apt update

Why do you not switch from Xubuntu to Linux Mint ? Mint is a derivate of Ubuntu but without Snap.

Small breakthrough: I booted the system without problems to tty1 (I believe this is called single user mode), logged in as an old user and now I can see all my data, logged in as old me.

Nice.

Do you still recommend to backup from live usb and upgrade from there?

I would backup from live usb and then when that is done stop using the live usb, reboot and try to upgrade via the recovery mode.

Some other contributors suggest I use a live usb, not installing the OS but using the live usb with working wlan to complete the installation, but this seems to be more complicated than working directly from initramfs.

My suggestion was to use live usb to find your /home files. Indeed using live usb and then using chroot to complete the upgrade from 23.10 to 24.04 is maybe more difficult (As /dev and /proc and /sys need to get mounted with the chroot). If I were you I would first find your /home files and make a backup and after that proceed with upgrading.

I purged the broken package with sudo dpkg -P libfreerdp2-2 and immediately afterwards I executed sudo apt get upgrade.

Cool.

how do I enable wlan as root from initramfs?

I’d run nmtui and then use the <TAB> key to navigate between the items and go for “Activate” to enable your WiFi connection. It will show no pop up or something when it successfully activates the connection. I think it will just show a * sign next to the connection item. When that is done use <TAB> to navigate out of nmtui and test your connection.