Hi everyone,

I’ve been a happy user of Fedora Workstation since Fedora 36 on my Surface Go 1.

I really enjoy Gnome and everything is set up the way I want to.

Since I was really happy with my setup I just wanted to be able to replicate it easily through Clonezilla so that I could port it on any future computer I’d get.

Sadly, even with the help of really helpful and knowledgeable users on Lemmy, it hasn’t worked (https://sh.itjust.works/post/25963065).

So now I’m left wondering if there could be a distribution that I’d enjoy and which would be easy to deploy on another computer as I’d hate to have to configure everything on every computer I’d get.

I love Gnome but I wouldn’t be against trying something else if necessary.

What distribution could meet my needs?

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    I just discovered the source of all your problems by reading your previous post.

    The Surface Go 1 is a UEFI system. The Acer Aspire 5737z is a legacy BIOS system and thus can’t boot UEFI partitions. If your Aspire was a UEFI system, what you did probably would have worked just fine - no need for a special snazzy distro (no offense, NixOS users).

    I’m actually extremely surprised no one noticed this before me.

    From here, you have a few routes:

    • Flash the install to the drive, and try to downgrade it to a legacy BIOS system.
    • Reinstall Fedora and copy just your Gnome config over - from what I can tell, it’s just a few directories.
    • Buy a slightly newer device (maybe 2012/2013-ish at the earlist, probably originally designed for Windows 8.x) that support UEFI so you could just use the image.
      • Honestly, I am a bit conflicted on this option, as I don’t exactly like not reusing the Aspire. However, this may be the easiest way out, and maybe you could put the Aspire to use as a server in a home lab instead.
    • Try NixOS like others have been saying. Learning things is fun when you have the time - I don’t, and so stick with Debian.