BYOD fun (not): Crunchbang, Viperr, UEFI

Son two is at his final year at school. Both boys, to now, have avoided having to take a computer to school, but that has now changed: he is told he needs to bring his own device (BYOD). THere is no way that he wants to take anything good to school — where it will be poked at. And he took one look at what I was going to install and said… noooo…. they will think I am a hacker.

This is Viperr, an unofficial Fedora remix that uses my second favourite window manager (Openbox) with integrated information systems. It’s up to date. It’s lightweight. It has scripts for installing most of what I use. It’s now running, including flash. The problem it has, however, is that it hates UEFI. So does Ubuntu: their installers simply wipe out everything. Which is not a worry on a laptop that can tolerate Windows seven.

Heck, it even has scripts for flash, so one can get the good stuff.

But the lightest thing with an SSD in the house is a Samsung Activ 9. An ultrabook. Which came with Windows 8, and it has a very sensitive bios.

So… I used Crunchbang. Crunchbang predates Viperr — Viperr is inspired by it, and it has a Debian installer. Very important that. because — although one can do this in fedora, the debian installer is much more manual — one needs to manually set up a FAT32 partition at the beginning of your distand then NOT use it. You leave it alone, auto partition the rest of the disk, and then when it comes to installing the bootloader you do NOT install to the master boot record but to that unused disk.

It then works. Your mileage will vary. We have had to use a USB dongle until we can get the internal wifi working. But… that can be sorted. And the idea of going and getting a Windows tablet for school (which is being promoted) appeals not. Besides, the fact it is linux should keep sticky fingers away.