Things to do after a new Debian installation

2019-09-22 339 words 2 minutes

Contents

So you have a new Debian installation? Maybe a minimal install like I do? Don’t worry, I have you covered what to do next.

Setup a sudo user without password

Go here.

Install software

Install software for daily use.

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$ sudo apt install build-essential \
 git zsh mpv feh xss-lock urlview \
 xbindkeys stow offlineimap mutt msmtp \
 notmuch vim.nox rxvt-unicode -y 

Setup touchpad

If you have a machine that supports multitouch, enabling tap to click is a good option. Create directories if they don’t have already created.

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$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

Create a file here as 20-libinput.conf. Mine looks like:

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$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-libinput.conf

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
  MatchIsTouchpad "on"
  Driver "libinput"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  Option "Tapping" "on"
  Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm"
  Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
EndSection

Brightness Keys

On some hardware, brightness keys don’t work out of the box. So create a file 30-backlight.conf in the same directory as you did in touchpad file.

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$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-backlight.conf 

Section "Device"
	Identifier "card0"
	Driver	   "intel"
	Option	   "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
	BusID      "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Automatically lock screen on resume from suspension

systemd-logind automatically suspends the laptop if lid is closed. But you have to create another unit file and enable it to lock the screen on resume from suspension.

Create a file /etc/systemd/system/wakelock@.service with following contents. Put your favorite locker application path in ExecStart if you don’t use slock.

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$ cat /etc/systemd/system/wakelock@.service

[Unit]
Description=Automatically lock the screen on resume from suspension
Before=sleep.target suspend.target

[Service]
User=%i
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
ExecStart=/usr/bin/slock

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target suspend.target

Reload the systemd daemon and enable/start it. Replace YOUR USERNAME with your username.

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$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable wakelock@<YOUR USERNAME>.service
$ sudo systemctl start wakelock@<YOUR USERNAME>.service

That’s it. I’ll update this article for more things I remember or anytime I had to reinstall and find something I had to do…