A method I have not seen mentioned yet (for when you have an old precompiled version of an app):
Identify the missing libs. You can run the program, but sometimes it’s easier to use ldd
Use your web browser to download the missing libs from Debian’s repos (stable or older if need be). Unfortunately you often also have to grab their deps too.
Extract the .debs
Move all of the .so files into the same folder as the old program you are trying to run
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$(pwd)"
Now try running the app
It often takes a bit of fiddling, but it’s worked for me a few times and you only need to fetch the few libraries you are missing. For bigger things however it can be a dependency hell, you might as well use the distro’s actual package manager inside a chroot.
Note: You don’t need to be using Debian as your host distro, I don’t. As long as it’s a glibc based distro you should be mostly fine (glibc is mostly backwards compatible)
You remove the scalar with pliers, then do some welding work on the initilalizer to get it to the proper shape (systemd is known to have unstandard sizes of shape and size plugs). Then, you chop the bit-stream into single bits and insert them one by one into the initializer, hold them there, then plug the initializer in systemd and let the bits fall in it. EZ
I’ll go one further and say choosing applications is more important than choosing a Desktop Environment.
I’m typing this message on Firefox. I installed it (and updated it) with Debian’s package management system. I clicked on a button on an XFCE panel to open it. But in terms of the time spent interacting with things on my computer I’m using the applications far more than anything else.
Same here! I joined lemmy right around the time my main hdd took a dump–so there was probably a bit of influence coming from here…While scrambling to get another windows installed (and encountering a bunch of obstacles along the way) i finally decided to just try Linux Mint Cinnamon. Tbh, i wasn’t sure if my computer was bricked by the time i finally got mint to start up via usb. When it started working, i tried a few basic things–browsing the web, playing music, videos etc. When it all worked with a minimal amount of fuss, i decided it was time to give up windows if i could. Haven’t been back to windows since!
Strangely topical for me. I wasted yesterday telling myself I was smart enough to make SwayWM on Wayland work well with my 1070. Should have trusted the warnings in the documentation; hubris cost me a weekend day!
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