Setting up my Linux system

Every PC I own I always install Debian Linux on them. I’ve been using Linux for many years and honestly if I was given a task to do in Windows I would probably be a little lost. I completely gave up on Windows when Windows XP SP2 came out. Before then I would dual boot both operating systems but I have been actively using it since I think Debian 2.0.

It’s the second oldest Linux distro and it’s the distro every other distro wants to be. Every release is named after a Toy Story movie character.

Anyway, when I do a fresh install I always like to use the unstable “Sid” release. Don’t let the name scare you it’s not unstable. The unstable release is just the newest software packages that hasn’t made it to the main stable release yet.

I typically get the mini.iso file from here. Slap it onto a thumb drive as usual and boot the system. This will install a bare system. Keep in mind were are doing this on their “expert Install”.

Use the Unstable "mini.iso" image.
    Download the "mini.iso" for your CPU architecture 
    During the installation choose "Advanced options" -> "Expert install".
    In the step "Choose a mirror of the Debian archive" choose version "sid - unstable" 

I typically don’t let root the ability to login. I just give my primary user SUDO powers.

On most of my systems I’ll have a dedicated hard drive for just the /home so if my system breaks some how I can retrieve my files. In most cases for the typical person just use the entire disk and all on one partition.

During the install process I will tell the system to use the kernel-image-amd64 and install security patches automatically. when it comes to software packages select SSH-Server and standard system utilities. If you attempt to install X11 at this point the install will fail. Finish the install by following the list. When you reboot you’ll be in a CLI (Command Line Interface)

From here we can install X11 and a window manager. To keep things simple I typically install KDE Plasma.

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop

This will install Wayland, KDE-Plasma and I think sddm. You’ll probably want to get a cup of coffee or something at this point in time. This is a large download and takes a hot minute to install. When it’s finished just issue a sudo reboot.

When the system has rebooted just log in and launch Konsole. From here I install two of my favorite tools.

sudo apt install kitty tmux

Kitty is a terminal frontend and tmux is my favorite terminal. I just put kitty on the task manager and issue a command to use tmux as my default “shell”

chsh -s /usr/bin/tmux

Now you probably noticed there isn’t a web browser installed. Well lets take care of that. I honestly prefer Firefox these days. I was using Brave for a while there but it’s like Chrome and hogs resources. By now you know how to install programs. You could ditch the terminal and use the KDE software tool called Discover.

Other things I install are Docker and Docker Desktop. I use the official docker repos for this and manually install the Docker Desktop DEB file.

I do run a virtual machine as well but I do not use virtual box, I use libvirt.

From here I just do some system cleaning with bleachbit and import my settings from another machine. I use to use a tiling window manager but since I got lazy one day and tried out KDE Plasma I’ve been using it. The KDE-Connect suite is pretty cool so I can sync my phone with my system. See notifications, texts, file transfer and so on. I also haven’t had any issues with Wayland but not all of my machines use it. Most of my older machines I’ll run a stable release of Debian like Bullseye or Bookworm so I can use X11.

Most of the software I use I don’t compile from source and just use the binary from aptitude. If it’s not available or doesn’t have a repo I’ll seek out a AppImage of it.

Currently my main system is dead in the water and I have been using my laptop. After the move I need to figure out on what to do with my computers. Kinda been thinking to use my Dell Servers as my main machines and use the Headless ROG Laptop as my secondary. Also currently this laptop has Ubuntu on it and I honestly hate it. Ubuntu is a terrible distro.