Installing Debian Bookworm

Second-hand PC, Dell Optilex

I installed Debian Bookworm to this machine. It took a half of day.

I use USB Bloutooth Dongle of 0a12:0001 for the machine.

Comments on Bookworm

Mostly, the installation procedure and the configuration for Bookworm was as same as my installation of Buster.

In the installation process, I only encountered an issue of lightdm-gtk-greeter.

https://bugs.debian.org/922603

USB memory preparation

The BIOS supports ISO 9660 image on USB memory, but it doesn't support legacy boot. This time, I was lazy not preparing EFI partition on USB memory, but just let it have ISO 9660 image.

Installation

I installed Debian Bookworm in English with timezone Asia/Tokyo. The locale setting is en_US.UTF-8. I chose : standard "Standard system utilities", desktop "Debian desktop environment" with XFCE, and "SSH server" tasks.

Installation went well, except non-free firmware of firmware-realtek.

Customization of /etc/group

I added "gniibe" to adm, mail, dialout, and sudo group.

Customization of /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf

As I reported in the bug report of 922603, I put:

[greeter]
indicators=~host;~spacer;~clock;~spacer;~session;~language;~a11y;~power

Customization for ssh-agent

Since I use gpg-agent to work for ssh-agent service, I disable ssh-agent. I removed the line:

use-ssh-agent

in /etc/X11/Xsession.options.

And I created a configuration file ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf with a single line of:

enable-ssh-support

Packages added just after installation

Important packages

Using console, I added following packages for my system administration:

  • etckeeper

Non-free

I installed non-free packages:

  • firmware-realteck (for ethernet rtl_nic/rtl8168h-2.fw)
  • firmware-misc-nonfree (for i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin).

Initial Desktop login

I login to the desktop in English, it created directories such as Desktop, Documents, etc. in my home directory.

Configuration of XFCE4

For XFCE4, it's as same as Buster.

Invoking xfce4-settings-manager ("Settings") from its "Application" menu, I configured:

  • Desktop
    • Background: Change background image of Desktop
    • Menus: Modify "Window List Menu" to disable "Show window list menu on desktop middle click"
    • Icons: Icon type = "None" not showing icons on Desktop
  • Window Manager
    • Style: Change "Theme" to "Daloa" for minimum height of title
    • Focus: Change "Focus model" to "Focus follows mouse"

Invoking xfce4-settings-editor "Settings Editor" from xfce4-settings-manager, I configured:

  • xfwm4

    • /general/tile_on_move: False

      This is important for me not to change Windows size during its move

  • xfce4-session

    I needed to create new entries with False values. See https://bugs.debian.org/791378

    • /startup/ssh-agent/enabled: False
    • /startup/gpg-agent/enabled: False

  • mouse and touchpad

    Enable tap action.

Customization of Panels

I place "Panel1" at the top-left of screen with "Application Menu", four launchers (Emacs, Browser, Terminal), Place, Desktop Button, and Window Button.

I place "Panel2" at the top-right of screen with two clocks (Japan and Germany timezone), Notification Area, Workspace switch, PulseAudio Plugin, CPU monitor, Battery Monitor and Action Button.

Panel 1 is like this:

Panel 1

And Panel 2 is like this:

Panel 2

Adding locales

I add Japanese locale by invoking dpkg-reconfigure:

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

I add ja_JP.UTF-8 and zh_CN.UTF-8, and specify its defaults to C.UTF-8.

Second login

Before second login, I rebooted the computer, since DBUS service needed to know the change of locales support.

Then, I logged in with Japanese, selecting language at lightdm screen.

More Packages

I added following packages for my daily use:

  • emacs
  • scdaemon
  • magit

and:

  • msmtp-mta

I added following package for my Japanese work:

  • fcitx-anthy

I added more packages to maintain this web pages:

  • pelican
  • make
  • imgp

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