GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Dell OptiPlex 740 (Kyral)

Kyral is an AMD64 desktop and server with 4GB of memory, a 250GB hard disk, a DVD$\pm$RW dual layer burner, and nVidia GeForce 6150 video chip. The machine came with MS/Windows Vista installed so the machine was set up for dual boot (an option during the install).

A default install using the Etch (version 4.0r0) release of Debian GNU/Linux, booting from DVD-RW, was performed [071022]. The DVD image was obtained using jigdo-file, running the command jigdo-lite (see Section 3.6.2) and specifying http://ftp.acc.umu.se/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/amd64/jigdo-dvd/debian-40r0-amd64-DVD-1.jigdo. MD5 checksums confirmed the integrity of the downloaded DVD image, and similarly for disks 2 and 3.

The non-free nvidia driver was required, which is quite a downside—we should avoid the nvidia graphics chips until they provide open source drivers. Each time the kernel is upgraded we need to recompile the nvidia module [090503]

Ubuntu Karmic was later installed as a clean install (after backing up the hard disk and restoring what was required [100320]. This was upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 [120430] and a clean install of Ubuntu 13.10 [131120]. Unity 3D had issues (slow and the nvidia proprietary drivers kept freezing) so Lubuntu was installed and has worked well.