Dumping Arch Linux for Debian

Hello all, new here.

So I had been happily running Arch Linux on my Dockstar for a couple of years when I made the mistake of upgrading the ntfs tools. That required me to do a full update of pretty much everything which resulted in days lost trying to unbork my system. Once I got the thing booting again, I was left in systemd hell. I wasted a couple more days just trying to get the freaking thing to set the clock on boot without much luck. Well now I've had it with Arch Linux. That systemd thing is just way too complicated and unnecessary on something that hardly ever gets rebooted. If it's main goal is to speed up booting, well I can do without it for all the frustration it's caused.

Anyhow, I thought I'd give Debian a try. I followed the steps given here to install Wheezy, but it fails and the last message in the log says something about the kernel being too old. I guess my first question is, what kernel? The one flashed into the Dockstar a couple of years ago when I unlocked it?

I gave up on Wheezy and decided to try the instructions given for Squeeze. This time the install completed, but it didn't create uImage or uInitrd, so it wouldn't boot. I followed the instructions given here (with the appropriate file name modifications) and I was up and running. Yay!

So now, before I go too far in completing the setup, my next question is am I missing anything or being foolish in going with Squeeze instead of Wheezy?

And one last question: on my Arch Linux setup I just had one partition on the flash drive I used. All the guides I've seen seem to recommend 3 for Debian, but is there any reason why I can't just have a swap partition and one other partition for everything else? My Dockstar is acting as a poor man's NAS with a 4GB flash drive for the OS and 500GB hard disk for my music, videos, and other stuff.

Thanks for reading!
-JT

renojim,

Quote

am I missing anything
or being foolish in going with Squeeze instead of
Wheezy?

Yes. Wheezy is a minimum nowadays.

Quote

My Dockstar is acting as a poor man's NAS with a 4GB flash drive for the OS and 500GB hard disk for my music, videos, and other stuff.

You can use 1 partition, and use a swap file on the HDD. It's more flexible that way.

-bodhi
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Thanks! Updating to Wheezy as we speak. I managed to update to the 3.15 kernel, but so far no luck in getting to 3.16. I'll try again once the Wheezy update is finished.

-JT