Things to do after installing Debian Jessie 8

In this guide, we are going to see the list of top/important things to do after installing Debian Jessie.

One of the first things to do is to update the sources and then grant sudo access to the default user so that we don’t need to switch user as root to perform operations that require root access. Granting sudo access to users on Home PC’s is ok but granting sudo access to users in an office environment is not recommended.

Update The Source List

Note: I would like to let you know that we are going to install software from the “contrib” and “non-free” repositories too.

Also we are going to add “contrib” & “non-free” repositories that are not 100% FOSS as per the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

• “contrib” – repositories include packages which do comply with the DFSG, but may fail other requirements. For instance, they may depend on packages which are in non-free or requires such for building them.
• “non-free” – repositories include packages which do not comply with the DFSG

If you want to use a installation that is 100% FOSS as per the Debian Free Software Guidelines then just don’t add “contrib” & “non-free” to the source list.

Now lets begin. Open terminal & run the following commands,

su

Enter the root password

Now open the sources.list file by running the following command

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

You’ll find something like

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main

Before editing the file, you should choose a mirror that is closest to you for the fastest downloads. Check the list of mirrors in this link, https://www.debian.org/mirror/list.

Now we have to add “contrib non-free” after main.

Also I’m disabling the source packages by commenting the source package repo. If you want to install the source packages also, then remove the # in front of the source repo.

Example of a jessie repo

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

For pure testing repo, just replace “jessie” with “testing” and add “contrib non-free” after main.

Example of a pure testing repo

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

Now save & close the file.

Update & Grant Sudo Access

Now lets update, install sudo and grant sudo access to the default user.

apt-get update

If you don’t want to give sudo access to the users then you should skip these steps.

apt-get install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo <username>

Now reboot the system.

Its just enough to logout/login and not necessary to reboot the system but I prefer to reboot the system.

Now as we have granted sudo access to the default user, we can now proceed to installing other packages.

Package Manager

Now we are going to install the following packages,

• synaptic package manager – graphical package management tool which enables you to install, upgrade and remove software packages in a user friendly way.
• apt-xapian-index – maintenance and search tools for a Xapian index of Debian packages
• gdebi – simple tool to install deb packages
• gksu – graphical frontend for su

sudo apt-get install synaptic apt-xapian-index gdebi gksu

Firmware Package

sudo apt-get install firmware-linux

CPU Firmware

AMD CPU

sudo apt-get install amd64-microcode

Intel CPU

sudo apt-get install intel-microcode

Display Drivers

First lets make sure that we install the proper display drivers. There is no one step solution for this, so you have to check the following links and install the appropriate drivers.

• https://wiki.debian.org/GraphicsCard
• https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo
• https://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary
• https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

After installing the display drivers, make sure to reboot the system and check that the display driver is working properly before proceeding to the next step.

Extra Fonts

sudo apt-get install ttf-freefont ttf-mscorefonts-installer ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation

Flash Plugin

Enable flash support for Iceweasel.

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Pepperflash Plugin

Enable flash support for Chromium browser. Skip this step if you plan on installing Google Chrome.

sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree

Icedtea Plugin

IcedTeaPlugin is a web browser plugin to execute Java applets.

sudo apt-get install icedtea-plugin

Applications

This is what I use on my system. You might want to change these as per your preference.

• file-roller : Archive manager
• evince : PDF reader
• parcellite : Clipboard manager (I don’t use “Clipman” that is bundled with xfce4 goodies because its buggy)
• qalculate : Calculator
• clementie : Audio player
• vlc : Video player
• bleachbit : System cleaner
• gimp : Image editor
• shotwell : To import pictures from digital camera
• gparted : Partition Manager
• gnome-disk-utility : Disk Utility
• libreoffice-writer : Document editor
• libreoffice-calc : Spreadsheet editor
• libreoffice-impress : Presentation editor
• chromium : Google’s open source chromium web browser

sudo apt-get install file-roller evince parcellite qalculate clementine vlc bleachbit gimp shotwell gparted gnome-disk-utility libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc libreoffice-impress chromium

Firewall

sudo apt-get install ufw

Add the default deny rule and we are good to go with a basic firewall.

sudo ufw default deny

The following single command is enough to enable the firewall and add it to startup.

sudo ufw enable

You can check the status by running the following commands

sudo ufw status

sudo ufw status verbose

If you want a gui to manage it then you may install gufw.

sudo apt-get install gufw

Volume Control: (Optional, Only for Xfce users)

You may skip this step if you want to stick with the the default Xfce mixer.

apt-get install pavucontrol

Go to “applications -> settings -> settings editor“, select “xfce4-panel” on the left hand side list and then scroll & search for “xfce4-mixer”. Edit it and replace “xfce4-mixer” with “pavucontrol” (refer screenshots).

  

Now right click on the audio icon in the panel, select “Run Audio Mixer” and then choose the pulse audio settings that you want to use (refer screenshot).

GUI to manage network connections (Only for Netinstall)

network-manager-gnome – This network manager supports VPN and mobile broadband in addition to wired & wireless wifi network connections.

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome

You can refer the Debian wiki, https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse, for information on setting up wifi.

Now we have to remove the network references in the network interfaces file. But we are going to disable it by commenting the lines rather than removing it. To do that, open the interfaces file and comment Comment every line except the 2 lines listed after the line that says “# The loopback network interface”.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

This is how my /etc/network/interfaces file look like after commenting the primary network interface (to disable it) except the loopback interface.

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
# allow-hotplug eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp

Now reboot the system.

Multimedia codecs

At this point of time, Debian is using the “libav-tools” package instead of ffmpeg in Jessie/Testing so we are going to stick with the default packages and install only some extra packages.

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer-perl libgstreamer-interfaces-perl

Extra screensavers (Optional)

If you are a fan of the matrix screensaver like me, then you might want to install it.

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver-gl

Multimedia codecs (Optional using deb-multimedia.org repo)

If you want to install w32codecs and libdvdcss2 (required for the decryption of CSS protected-DVD), then you need to add 3rd party repository to do that. It involves apt pinning using preferences file and you can find it in this article, Apt Pinning Debian Multimedia Using Preferences.

Font Rendering

If you want to improve the font rendering in Debian then you may want to check this article, Ubuntu like Debian Font Rendering using Infinality Font.

Theme & Icon Set

If you want to make Debian Jessie look like Xubuntu then you may want to check this article, Install Xubuntu Theme in Debian Xfce.