Q4OS Forum

Bernalg

Member

Registered: 2025-03-14

Posts: 7

Transitioning from Pop_OS to Debian

Hi,

I have in one laptop Q4OS installed since I wanted to revive it and it did pretty well, especially since in the past it could not accept many Linux distributions. A second laptop, in fact my main one, uses Pop_OS currently. But I had an issue after a 'sudo upgrade', I wasn't watching, but I suspect I ran out of battery and so the kernel got messed up, every time I turn on the laptop I get the message:

"Kernel Panic! Please reboot your computer. Not working init found. Try passing int= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst for guidance"

I tried to start from the GRUB menu 'Pop_os-oldkern.conf' and it also failed and showed the kernel panic message. So I guess I'd have to boot off a live USB and back up my documents. I did read some recommendations that I should check and repair all my Linux partitions, I plan to do this from a debian distribution, any advice?

So it seems that this is an opportunity to change distribution. I chose Pop_OS because it had the Nvidia drivers preinstalled, but the GNOME desktop and the recurrent problems after updating convinced me that this is not a good distribution for me.

I saw this recent post, so it might clear some doubts about transitioning to Debian from the other distribution because I'd really love to have the Nvidia GEFORCE RTX drivers installed and working properly:

https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5657

I do wonder if I should go to pure Debian or also installed Q4OS, the weight of the distribution is not a problem, my laptop is new, I'm curious what are the advantages of using Q4OS above pure Debian.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Bernalg (2025-09-20 04:53)

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 5,593

Website

Re: Transitioning from Pop_OS to Debian

... I'm curious what are the advantages of using Q4OS above pure Debian.

With Q4OS you will get a few tools on top of Debian, please see https://www.q4os.org/dqa015.html . You will be able to maintain Q4OS the same way as Debian, because we don't modify the inherent Debian base.