What should I do after installing Debian 12?

[ZennMystic]

A friend asked me if I wanted their old laptop. If not they were going to toss it. I have also bought a new(ish) desktop too. I thought about giving Debian a go and trying it out on the laptop. I have never herd of it till now and liked the look of it.

what are some good things I should do right from the start?

Should I put home on a separate partition? I saw a YouTube video that said to do this because its easier to re-install the OS or upgrade later? Is this true?

I also read to uninstall Firefox and install flatpak version? Also do this with most of the other software too?

I thought I would install gnome env and plasma and try both to see what ones I like.

I also notice there was something about x11 and Wayland. I think this is how the GUI is displayed yes?

I want to use the laptop to give Debian a go. I know a lot of things are going to be personal preference and stuff that's ok

I'm just looking for pointers now so if/when I install it on my main desktop I get the install/setup right the first time.

 

[KGIII]

what are some good things I should do right from the start?

I guess that really depends on your goals? I install the tools I need immediately and work from there.

Should I put home on a separate partition?

In my opinion, that's more hassle than needed today. You can always recover /home if the drive is still alive and not encrypted.

I also read to uninstall Firefox and install flatpak version?

That just sounds like a waste of time. If you're worried about Firefox from the distro vendor, you probably shouldn't use that distro. But, what was their motivation for suggesting that?

I think this is how the GUI is displayed yes?

More or less. Wayland is a series of standards. It either adheres to the standards or it does not.

I know a lot of things are going to be personal preference and stuff that's ok

Yup.

I'm just looking for pointers now so if/when I install it on my main desktop I get the install/setup right the first time.

Install, add what you need as you go along, and enjoy it. If Debian doesn't suit your needs, there are many other choices - including Debian derivatives that might make it easier for you, like Ubuntu or maybe even Linux Mint.

 

[guiverc]

what are some good things I should do right from the start?

I normally open up a web browser and search "what are things to do after installing debian 12" and read a number of articles for ideas. I generally follow none of them, but they may provide me with ideas of what I want.. I'll usually then follow official guides on how to achieve what I decided I wanted, over articles I got from a search engine if I have no idea who wrote them, or how trustworthy they are.

Should I put home on a separate partition? I saw a YouTube video that said to do this because its easier to re-install the OS or upgrade later? Is this true?

I'll differ to the prior answer of @KGIII here, and say I normally would do it. Some GNU/Linux OSes do not give any benefit from it (eg. you'll gain nothing with Ubuntu Desktop or flavors), but I can't even recall if Debian benefits from this on re-install, or like Ubuntu doesn't care. If you want the ability to go elsewhere, or non-destructively re-install I think it's worthwhile...

Keeping it simple is usually best; this is one circumstance where I'd go against that sorry. The box I'm using now is installed on a single partition (not counting ESP), as is my other OS on it; but both systems are Ubuntu and I can't see moving away from them. I can't recall if my Debian boxes are all like this though; I suspect most if not all have separate /home.

I also read to uninstall Firefox and install flatpak version? Also do this with most of the other software too?

I can't comment here, I don't... but I really only using firefox on my Debian 13 or testing box, or when I'm on Ubuntu systems.

I thought I would install gnome env and plasma and try both to see what ones I like.

I also notice there was something about x11 and Wayland. I think this is how the GUI is displayed yes?

One thing I love about Debian is how bloated you can make it... My secondary PC which runs Debian trixie (13/testing) offers me 26 session choices at login, ie. loads of different DEs & WMs at login.

Adding many DEs (& WMs) can add complexity; & waste resources, eg. KDE Plasma is a Qt5 desktop, GNOME is GTK, so adding them to the same system can result in you trying to use both at the same time, thus mandating your machine having both Qt5 & GTK libs/toolkits in RAM wasting RAM! which can slow down a machine significantly if its not got the spare resources.

FYI: My secondary PC is a 2008 dell box; old c2q-9400 cpu so is very light on resources though thankfully has 8GB of RAM, but I'm still careful with what I have running at the same time.

I have sessions that allow me to use KDE Plasma, or GNOME using X11 (Xorg) display server or Wayland display manager. Both your hardware, and that apps you'll run may make one easier or better than the other; or they'll just appear slightly different.

I'm just looking for pointers now so if/when I install it on my main desktop I get the install/setup right the first time.

I'd not worry about getting it right the first time, many of us learn best by making mistakes, and then do most of our learning when we fix up those mistakes!

I've got many things I want to get done today; middle of that list is a QA (Quality Assurance) test for a Ubuntu flavor, and involves a non-destructive re-install of the system... That's an install type useful to fix mistakes, but in my case I'm just going to do that install to ensure

• none of my data files (esp. music) gets lost
• my manually installed (the additional apps I added; esp. my non-default music player) gets auto-reinstalled

Mistakes do not need to be catastrophic; many have quick easy fixes (although re-install is really a workaround).

 

[KGIII]

If you want the ability to go elsewhere, or non-destructively re-install I think it's worthwhile...

100% agree with this.

I just take a different attitude with it. I'll copy and paste what I need from /home later.

 

[Brickwizard]

Be careful of YouTube videos, some are at best lacking, some are inaccurate [I never use them]
As a novice using a machine purely for testing/installing a single distribution, I would not bother getting into manual partitioning, as it unnecessary on most distributions,

Make sure you have means to connect the machine to the Internet other than Wi-Fi [hard-wire to a router or a teatherd mobile] just in case you need to download additional drivers for Wi-Fi and graphics cards.

Once you have yourself set up and running, then install Timeshift or similar recovery application

 

[Terminal Velocity]

Never uninstall the FF ESR that comes pre-installed with Debian

 

[kc1di]

I install two things right off inxi and deb-get.
Inxi is a great command line tool for profiling the system.
deb-get let you install 3rd party package easily. - See here:

What is deb-get? How to Install the Debian Package with the deb-get Command

deb-get is a new command line utility built by Martin Wimpress [https://twitter.com/m_wimpress], an active contributor to the Linux community. You can use this utility to install third-party packages on your Debian machine. It only works with Debian or Debian-based distros like Ubuntu, Linux...

www.freecodecamp.org

everything else will depend upon what you hope to do with Debian. I use Vivaldi browser for instance and zoom which I get from deb-get. Also Brave-browser is there.
if you use wine for MS programs/ games you will want to also allow multi arch for Debian, it does not come with Ia32 support.

Multiarch/HOWTO - Debian Wiki

wiki.debian.org

The list could go on and on depending on what your want to do with it. One plus is that Debian 12 comes with non-free driver support now. But you will still need to enable non-free repositories if you need any other non free packages.

How to Enable the Contrib and Non-Free Repositories on Debian 12 – Linux Consultant

Comprehensive tutorial on how to enable/add and disable/remove the official Debian 12 contrib and non-free package repositories along with practical examples.

www.linuxconsultant.org

Debian is solid and a good distro. But it doesn't hold your hand either. So don't be afraid to experiment if needed.
Also there was a problem with the Live .iso Where it would not install a complete Apt sources list when installed to machine. I don't know if that was fixed yet. but I recommend using the net install .iso to do the actual install. Good luck and enjoy!

 

[The Duck]

Google "Things To Do After Installing Debian" that's what I do after installing Linux.
Check it out and see what you find could be interesting.

 

[Deleted member 108694]

One of the first things I do is add yourself to sudo user group

usermod -aG sudo your-username

Reboot
Now I update the machine

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Next I usually install my printer - then any utilities I might want to use like - inxi, xinput, net-tools, wmctrl and the like

 

[gvisoc]

Hi! Tossing my 2 cents here

A friend asked me if I wanted their old laptop. If not they were going to toss it. I have also bought a new(ish) desktop too. I thought about giving Debian a go and trying it out on the laptop. I have never herd of it till now and liked the look of it.

what are some good things I should do right from the start?

Try to get value from it and use it for some productive work, which my include, but not only, to learn about it.

Should I put home on a separate partition? I saw a YouTube video that said to do this because its easier to re-install the OS or upgrade later? Is this true?

I stopped doing this about 15 years ago. Just back up your home directory instead. Déjà-Dup is simple and effective to start with, but you may look to any other solution to this, including manual copies with or without rsync, why not.

I also read to uninstall Firefox and install flatpak version? Also do this with most of the other software too?

Although this has a case for codecs and other stuff, I have to say that I use flatpaks quite a bit, but not for Firefox. There are parts of the system integration where Flatpaks fail due to their sandboxed nature. Anyway, nothing prevents you to have Firefox in deb and Flatpak

I thought I would install gnome env and plasma and try both to see what ones I like.

This is a very recommendable thing to do, but you may end up with duplicated applications and a bit of a mess in the application launcher / menu. If you can, I'd recommend to do this, but installing one in a VM. If you choose to install Gnome, you already have Boxes, which is super simple to use.

I also notice there was something about x11 and Wayland. I think this is how the GUI is displayed yes?

It is. Wayland is more modern and better in some ways, but unfinished.

I want to use the laptop to give Debian a go. I know a lot of things are going to be personal preference and stuff that's ok

I'm just looking for pointers now so if/when I install it on my main desktop I get the install/setup right the first time.

Just give it a try and come back with your impressions!

 

[ZennMystic]

I left the root thing blank since it said it would make the user the root. I will be the only user person to use the laptop. This not a good ideas?

a person above said not to uninstall the Firefox but Here: Debian 12 - The First 12 Things You Should Do After Installation! said should install the latest for to be up to date and more secure?

Also a lot of pleaces I have been reading say to install ssh But I am not sure I need this. I will want to access my nas but only from home so laptop will be in the same place anyway. So I do not think I need this?

 

[ZennMystic]

oh ok I was posting as the above post came in TY for all the help and advice. I will give it a go. I was just very nervous about it is all and thought I'd reach out first. I have to say I was not expecting so much input. Very different response to when I was on windows and had real install issues (big reason I left.)

thank you all. I will start to install in a bit.

 

[Alexzee]

Never uninstall the FF ESR that comes pre-installed with Debian

Agreed, I've been running Debian for a long time and uninstalling the ESR didn't go well and installing the current or highest version of FF was a pain.

 

[Alexzee]

Before you install Debian; ZennMystic you may want to make sure that your laptops architecture has enough driving power in the CPU, GPU and RAM department.

There are lighter versions of Linux to choose from if need be:-

 

[The Duck]

Never uninstall the FF ESR that comes pre-installed with Debian

Agreed, I've been running Debian for a long time and uninstalling the ESR didn't go well and installing the current or highest version of FF was a pain.

I've never had an issue with Firefox ESR and in fact prefer it to the latest Firefox releases.

 

[ZennMystic]

I've never had an issue with Firefox ESR and in fact prefer it to the latest Firefox releases.

Interesting what is the difference?

Also if some of the apps are fairly old on Debian what about security? This is a very different idea than what I read online... They said install Flatpak and install latest software apps.

 

[ZennMystic]

I also read a firewall is a good idea. But I have never seen any mention of anti-virus... Like it is not needed on Linux...? I know is getting a little off track but I have been wondering for a while now.

I plan to install Debian tomorrow. So if their is anything else anyone thinks I should know or install... I will check back here again before I start install,

I do not know the specs of the laptop as I format it in preparation of Debian install. I know it came before with Windows 7. So I hope good enough. As soon as Debian is installed and I find out how to get specs from it. I will post.

 

[The Duck]

I've never had an issue with Firefox ESR and in fact prefer it to the latest Firefox releases.

Interesting what is the difference?

This will explain.

Switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) for personal use | Firefox Help

How to switch to Firefox ESR as a workaround for issues with the newest version of Firefox.

support.mozilla.org

 

[gvisoc]

I also read a firewall is a good idea. But I have never seen any mention of anti-virus... Like it is not needed on Linux...? I know is getting a little off track but I have been wondering for a while now.

Viruses, as in self-propagating malware (i.e.: propagating without user intervention) are not a thing anymore, not even for Windows.

However, malware that tricks the user to input their password to elevate privileges (as in sudo), and use those privileges to harm the system and propagate, is something that affects all three major OS. Although desktop Linux users are not so much targeted because it has a smaller market share that Windows or macOS, the threat exists in the form of tampered packages, scripts that run with privileges, and so on.

In addition to those, in order to protect your friends and family (that may be used a more targeted system like Windows or macOS), there are things that we may want to scan to make sure we don't accidentally send them a file with a malware that, being harmless for Linux, would infect their systems.

For those double checks, I use ClamAv (+ its GUI, ClamTK), in a non-resident way, meaning that it is not running all the time. I update the defintion files and I scan my files manually when I think it's appropriate: when I download software from sources that don't offer a means to verify the downloads, when I receive unexpected files that may be valuable or information in unexpected formats, etc., etc.

 

[guiverc]

Also if some of the apps are fairly old on Debian what about security?

Both Debian & Ubuntu use a stable release model, where by the application versions will remain the same for the life of the release (ensuring stability) but fixes made in later releases will get backported to the older version.

Thus you will get security fixes, BUT not non-security fixes in almost all cases... You can thus incur an annoying bug in a release, but because it's not a security flaw the fix isn't backported.

I've linked Ubuntu in here, as it's where I can speak with more authority (whilst I've been using Debian since late 90s, before Ubuntu even existed, I'm heavily involved with Ubuntu now and thus my including both).

There are cases where backporting the security fixes from a later version of package is more work than just providing the newer version, thus in rare cases the version can change (ie. version in the stable repository changes). Whilst I can think of an example in Ubuntu where this occurred, I cannot think of any case in Debian where this occurred (but regardless I believe it's theoretically possible there too). Ubuntu procedures are modified Debian procedures; except for teams focus as for packages.

I'm no DD or DM, so if you get answers from either I'd take their view over my own (I never had to study the policies & then sit interviews/panels in answering them!).