NOTHING MORE, CALM DEEP FOREST

when i "upgraded" from debian 12 to 13, the proprietary nvidia drivers i was using completely stopped working and it wouldn't even boot to tty (or at least it wouldn't dispay anything but a black screen).. i was able to get it working again by live-booting void linux from a dvd, then mounting the laptop ssd, doing chroot, then switching over to nouveau. nouveau has actually been working surprisingly well so far (for my purposes).

however, the wifi drivers are another situation.. the proprietary broadcom driver was generating scary warning messages on boot, so i switched to an open source version.. the boot screen looked nicer, but then when i was running the system it kept dropping the wifi, so i had to switch back.. i don't want to use ethernet on a laptop!! that defeats the whole purpose!

also, more than occasionally when i boot up i get these "rcu_preempt" errors and i have to shut it down and start over again.. this happens maybe 1/5 times i boot up. the crappy new google ai chatbot was actually pretty helpful with resolving the nvidia issue, but when it comes to the rcu_preempt stuff, it keeps giving me advice that doesn't work, and that often contradicts stuff it said before, so i guess the anti-ai position is vindicated there.

running linux on an old macbook is hardly unheard of, but it can still be really buggy in a lot of ways and most of the documentation and discussion you see online assumes you're using hardware that's more compatible with the kernel. clearly if i'm going to get it working perfectly, it's going to require more of a bespoke solution than what i'm currently seeing when i try to look online to troubleshoot stuff. maybe i'll just have to accept that it's only 80% functional.. part of me wishes i just stuck with debian 12, but it's probably for the best that i transitioned to the latest version.

will i ever get this system to work.. or do i need to buy a fucken thinkpad?