Introduction

Debian is a GNU/Linux distribution with a long history. At any time given there are three releases of Debian available: stable, testing and unstable. As of this writing wheezy is labeled as stable and jessie is labeled as testing. The stable branch is known for being stable and secure but that comes with the price of having not so up to date packages. The testing branch usually has more up to date packages but you might stuble upon some broken package.

For servers stable branch is reccommended. For desktops and laptops you might have to upgrade some packages to testing. Even if you're attempting to install testing version of Debian, picking the installer of stable version is a safe bet. Occasionally testing images is broken.

Downloading

The easiest way to download Debian is to use the network install ISO:

# Download Debian 7.3.0 amd64 netinstaller
wget -c http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.3.0/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-7.3.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso

Once you've got it, just become root and cat it to a memory stick:

# Become root
sudo -s

# Remember to unmount any filesystems from the memory stick first.
umount /dev/sdz*

# Write ISO to memory stick
cat debian-7.3.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso > /dev/sdz

# Make sure buffers are emptied before you pull out the memory stick
sync

Installing

Plug in the memory stick to the machine and boot from it. The installer should be quite straightforward. The BtrFS should be quite stable now and you can install root filesystem on BtrFS formatted filesystem. Note that most packages are installed off the internet with this ISO so it is recommended to hook your machine up with an ethernet cable. Unlike Ubuntu Debian does not contain any closed-source firmware blobs so to perform installation over WiFi you might need to copy your wireless card firmware from some other machine first.

Once the installation has completed and you've booted into your new system you're most probably greeted with a command line if you didn't select graphical interface in the installer.

Setting up OpenSSH server

OpenSSH server makes life much easier because you can use any other machine to connect to the newly installed Debian box.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Now you can use OpenSSH or Putty to connect from any other machine and copy-paste stuff off this page ;)

Installing utils

Installing utilities that make life easier:

sudo apt-get install -y \
    pciutils usbutils \
    lsb-release \
    acpitool \
    hdparm sdparm smartmontools \
    screen byobu \
    mc rsync \
    htop iptraf iotop iftop mtr nmap

Installing wireless chipset firmware

As said, Debian doesn't ship with wireless chipset firmware by default because most of them are closed-source. To install firmware for Intel, Ralink, Realtek and others alike the non-free repository has to be enabled:

echo "deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ wheezy non-free" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/non-free.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree \
    firmware-atheros firmware-brcm80211 firmware-libertas \
    firmware-ralink firmware-realtek zd1211-firmware

This applies to most Lenovo Thinkpad laptops.

Installing MATE desktop

Personally I'm dissapointed in KDE4, GNOME3 and Unity desktop environments. MATE desktop evnironment continues the traditions of GNOME2 desktop. MATE desktop provides anything you expect to work out-of-box on modern hardware: wired/wireless network interface management, setting up Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, mounting USB disks, volume control etc.

wget -q http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian/mate-archive-keyring.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/debian wheezy main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mate-desktop.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment-extra \
    ntp \
    lightdm \
    network-manager network-manager-gnome \
    mate-media-pulse mate-settings-daemon-pulse \
    gedit gedit-plugins

If you use Bluetooth audio headset, have HDMI audio output, want to play audio from remote source (laptop) or to remote sink (desktop), need to switch inputs/outputs runtime or change volume per application then you also might want to install PulseAudio:

sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports \
    pulseaudio \
    pulseaudio-module-zeroconf \
    pulseaudio-module-bluetooth \
    pulseaudio-esound-compat \
    pulseaudio-utils \
    pavucontrol \
    paprefs

Once you've installed graphical user interface you might notice that Debian installer left some entries about memory stick in the /etc/fstab, you probably have to remove them in order for the regular user to have write access to USB memory sticks:

/dev/sdc1       /media/usb0     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sdc2       /media/usb1     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0

I prefer to have Bluetooth disabled by default, you may still enable it from the Bluetooth icon in the notification area:

sudo sed /etc/default/bluetooth -i -e 's/BLUETOOTH_ENABLED=1$/BLUETOOTH_ENABLED=0/g'

Tiling window management

Coming from Ubuntu you will probably miss the maximize, maximize left, maximize right gestures you can do with dragging a window to the edge of a screen. MATE desktop 1.8 will have that features, but 1.6 shipped in Debian repositories does not include that yet. There is a quicktile Python snippet which allows configuring Super+Left, Super+Right, Super+Up shortcuts to emulate similar behaviour:

echo "
[general]
cfg_schema = 1
UseWorkarea = True
ModMask = <Mod4>

[keys]
Up = maximize
Left = left
Right = right
" > .config/quicktile.cfg

And launch it in every session by:

echo "python quicktile.py -b &" >> ~/.xsession

Installing OpenOffice/LibreOffice

OpenOffice has been deprecated in favour for LibreOffice:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice

Installing Firefox

Since Debian wishes to provide optimized executable for their particular library stack they had to compile their own version of Firefox. Unfortunately Mozilla Corporation didn't allow Firefox branding for such binary. Therefore in Debian you have to get along with Iceweasel which essentially is unbranded version of Firefox:

sudo apt-get install iceweasel

Installing Google Chrome

Google Chrome is not distributed within Debian repositories because of various reasons. You can install Google Chrome by adding it's repository. This of course only works on x86 so Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard are out:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome. Unlike Google Chrome it does not support MP3 for HTML5 audio out-of-box. Chromium is included in the main Debian repository:

sudo apt-get install chromium

Note that Chromium builds on Debian armel/armhf are broken for some reason.

Installing Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a potential backdoor for your Linux box so installing it is strongly discouraged, instead you should switch Youtube to HTML5. If that is not enough you can install Adobe Flash by:

apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Installing Oracle VirtualBox

I needed VirtualBox with USB forwarding support. This is unfortunately available only with the closed-source extension pack available from Oracle. The easiest way to install VirtualBox maintained by Oracle is to add the proper APT repositories:

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian wheezy contrib" | \
        sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oracle-virtualbox.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y virtualbox-4.3

If you're certain that the open-source edition is good enough for you, just issue:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

If you need userspace emulation to run binaries for other architectures then you might want to try out QEMU userspace emulation:

sudo apt-get install qemu-user

Installing GIMP

You may try to run Adobe Photoshop with wine, it actually runs quite well but GIMP is enough for me. Besides with latest gimp versions you can switch it to single-windowed mode (Windows -> Single-Window Mode):

sudo apt-get install gimp

Installing up to date VLC

Wheezy ships with VLC 2.0.3, you can grab latest VLC 2.1.2 from Wheezy backports repository:

echo "deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main contrib non-free" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheezy-backports.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y -t wheezy-backports \
    vlc libavcodec-extra-53

To change VLC theme, or generally speaking the theme for all Qt based applications you need to install Qt configuration utility:

sudo apt-get install qt4-qtconfig
qtconfig

For Intel video cards enable GPU assisted decoding in the preferences menu of VLC. Make sure you have installed following and checked that vainfo reports support for some profiles:

sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver vainfo

Installing Skype

Skype is yet another closed source binary blob, but it can be installed via following:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libgcc1:i386 \
    libqt4-dbus:i386 libqt4-network:i386 libqt4-xml:i386 \
    libqtcore4:i386 libqtgui4:i386 libqtwebkit4:i386 \
    libstdc++6:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxss1:i386 \
    libxv1:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libpulse0:i386
wget -O /tmp/skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-deb
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/skype-install.deb

Note that Skype has issues with PulseAudio. If pulse0:i386 refuses to install try relocating PulseAudio client configuration:

sudo mv /etc/pulse/client.conf /etc/pulse/client.conf.old

Fixing Thinkpad middle button scroll

Just add following code snippet to X session startup scripts:

echo '
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6 7 4 5
' | sudo tee /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99thinkpad-wheel-emulation

And make sure you have installed xinput:

sudo apt-get install xinput

Fixing font rendering

If you've been a long time Ubuntu user you will probably notice that fonts look ugly on Debian especially when you're using LCD screen like the one you might find on a laptop. That's because Microsoft has patented subpixel rendering technology and by default Debian attempts to avoid legal repercussions in US by disabling patented technologies. To enable beautiful font rendering just dump following to /etc/fonts/local.conf

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
   <const>rgb</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
   <const>hintslight</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

You are also probably missing bunch of fonts. As I've understood ttf-liberation package provides substitutes for Windows fonts which have been traditionally supplied via ttf-mscorefonts-installer or msttcorefonts package.

sudo apt-get install \
    ttf-liberation \
    ttf-arphic-uming \
    ttf-wqy-zenhei \
    fonts-ipafont-mincho \
    fonts-ipafont-gothic \
    ttf-unfonts-core \
    fonts-sil-gentium fonts-sil-gentium-basic \
    ttf-dustin ttf-georgewilliams ttf-sjfonts \
    ttf-larabie-deco ttf-larabie-straight ttf-larabie-uncommon

Finally clear per-user fontconfig caches:

sudo fc-cache -fv

Install kernel with Con Kolivas patches

Con Kolivas has provided his patches to enable Brain Fuck Scheduler for Linux 3.12 series which should enable lower latency and better input/output scheduling for laptops. To compile the kernel you might want to insert proper field values to /etc/kernel-pkg.conf:

maintainer := Lauri Võsandi
email := lauri.vosandi@gmail.com
priority := Low
debian = 99koodur0

Then you're good to go:

# Install dependencies
sudo apt-get install build-essential gawk libncurses5-dev kernel-package

# Download kernel source
wget -c https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.12.9.tar.xz
tar xvf linux-3.12.9.tar.xz
mv linux-3.12.9 linux-3.12.9-ck2
cd linux-3.12.9-ck2

# Download and apply patches
wget -c http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/3.0/3.12/3.12-ck2/patch-3.12-ck2.bz2
bunzip2 patch-3.12-ck2.bz2
patch -p1 < patch-3.12-ck2

# Initialize default config for kernel source
make oldconfig

# Build kernel package
nice fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd binary-arch -j32

The package should be in the top level directory:

sudo dpkg -i ../linux-image-3.12.9-ck2_99koodur0_amd64.deb

In some cases ionice could also help out by throttling stressful I/O processes.

Installing Estonian ID-card software

RIA does not ship binaries for Debian, however the source is available and if you're up to it you can compile it. Easiest way is to use an APT repository I've prepared:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B8A6153D
echo "deb http://packages.koodur.com wheezy main" |
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/koodur.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install estonianidcard

The kernels you may find in the same repository: disabled ATA disk support, disabled InfiniBand, enabled low-latency desktop pre-emption, Deadline scheduler for input/output, Brain Fuck Scheduler or Completely Fair Scheduling if the BFS is not available for processes.

Installing packages from source

In order to install packages from source you most probably need following:

sudo apt-get install -y \
    build-essential bison flex gawk libncurses5-dev \
    kernel-package libxslt1-dev \
    make git bzr subversion autoconf libtool

Installing Ruby on Rails

Install Ruby, Ruby package manager and development headers:

sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev rubygems libsqlite3-dev

Install Ruby on Rails:

sudo gem install rails -V

Why the frick RoR does not pick up sqlite bindings installed via APT?!

Installing hipster douchebag Sublime text editor

Sublime is closed source binary blob, so again installing this is not recommended if you care about your privacy:

wget -c http://c758482.r82.cf2.rackcdn.com/Sublime%20Text%202.0.2%20x64.tar.bz2 -O /tmp/sublime.tar.bz2
tar xvjf /tmp/sublime.tar.bz2 -C /opt
sudo mv /opt/Sublime\ Text\ 2 /opt/sublime-text-2
sudo ln -s /opt/sublime-text-2/sublime_text /usr/local/bin/sublime_text

Installing Arduino and Fritzing

You most probably get outdated versions of Arduino and Fritzing from Debian Wheezy, nevertheless:

sudo apt-get install fritzing arduino

Install Django

Instal Python, PIP package manager, etc:

sudo apt-get install \
    python-dev cython ipython python-pip \
    python-mysqldb python-jinja2 \
    python-geoip \
    geoip-database

And of course you can get up to date Python packages via pip:

sudo pip install \
    mercurial \
    django sass cssselect python-cjson tinycss
    pillow \
    unicodecsv \
    splicetee pysendfile \
    beautifulsoup \
    inotifyx \
    xbcfg \
    pygal lxml cairosvg

Install docutils

To install docutils make sure you have fonts from LaTeX and PIP:

sudo apt-get install python-pip
    python-matplotlib \
    texlive-fonts-extra \
sudo pip install \
    pygments docutils rst2pdf

Installing multimedia tools

FFMPEG has been deprecated in favor for libav-tools, moc is a nice command-line audio player:

sudo apt-get install -y \
    moc libav-tools \
    libflac-dev libmad0-dev libogg-dev \
    libchromaprint0 \
    python-mutagen

Set file associations

File associations have always been a mess in Linux, in my /usr/share/applications/defaults.list I have:

[Default Applications]
application/pdf=atril.desktop;evince.desktop
image/jpeg=eom.desktop;gimp.desktop
image/bmp=eom.desktop;gimp.desktop
image/png=eom.desktop;gimp.desktop
image/svg+xml=eom.desktop;inkscape.desktop
text/html=chromium.desktop
text/plain=pluma.desktop
text/x-modelica=pluma.desktop
text/x-python=pluma.desktop
application/x-shellscript=pluma.desktop
video/matroska=smplayer.desktop
video/mpeg=smplayer.desktop
audio/mpeg3=vlc.desktop
audio/wav=vlc.desktop
audio/vorbis=vlc.desktop

Add colourful command prompt

Remember that neat colorful command-prompt from Gentoo? Well you can also have it in Debian:

echo "
if [[ \${EUID} == 0 ]] ; then
  PS1='\[\033[01;31m\]\h\[\033[01;34m\] \W \$\[\033[00m\] '
else
  PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w \$\[\033[00m\] '
fi
" | sudo tee -a /etc/bash.bashrc
sudo rm -fv /etc/skel/.bashrc
sudo rm -fv /home/*/.bashrc
sudo rm -fv /root/.bashrc

Disable Terminus font on console

I personally find Linux's built-in console font more appealing than the one Debian substitutes it for. The package in charge is console-setup, you may remove it:

sudo apt-get purge console-setup

Or if preferred, substitute it's config with a dummy one:

sudo mv /etc/default/console-setup /etc/default/console-setup.backup
echo "" | sudo tee /etc/default/console-setup

Fix video tearing

Wheezy ships with 2.19 version of Intel video card drivers which still has issues on Sandy Bridge chipsets. You may try backporting a package from testing/jessie, pinning packages from testing is not reccommended since it can blow up your whole package management. I have backported 2.21 from jessie and it seems to be working fine, if you're interested in just that package you may download it:

wget http://packages.koodur.com/dists/wheezy/main/binary-amd64/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.21.15-2~koodur0_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.21.15-2.99koodur0_amd64.deb

You probably have to explicitly tell the Xorg driver to enable TearFreea and SwapbuffersWait flags in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Using SNA acceleration method might be a good idea aswell:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "TearFree" "true"
    Option "SwapbuffersWait" "true"
    Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
EndSection

The TearFree experimental flag was added in 2.20 version of Intel driver, and as far as I know it only works with SNA acceleration and with SwapbuffersWait enabled. It should work with both - with and without 3D compositing. You can see if TearFree was enabled with:

lauri@localhost ~ $ grep TearFree /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[     5.202] (**) intel(0): Option "TearFree" "true"

If you're adventurous you might want to try to enable PCI Express powersave, framebuffer compression, LVDS downclocking and RC6 powersave mode for GPUs. If you experience hangs try disabling RC6. If you see garbage on the screen you might want to disable framebuffer compression.

sudo sed -i /etc/default/grub -e \
    's/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=.*$/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pcie_aspm=force i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.i915_enable_rc6=1"/g'
sudo update-grub2

When you enable 3D compositing in MATE desktop (System -> Preferences -> Windows) the whole desktop environment switches from traditional bitmap based rendering to OpenGL based rendering. There are couple ways to render OpenGL stuff on Xorg based systems, when you don't have proper video card drivers installed a software renderer is used which is of course slow. The video card driver works properly if direct rendering is enabled:

lauri@localhost ~ $ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes