Starting using Debian 12 (with problem)

Disclaimer: Don't blame linux just because I'm writing post like this, if you want are unfamiliar and want to try linux then I highly recommended using use Linux Mint distro, they are very stable and should works for most machine.

My first time using Debian was with KDE Plasma, I pretty sure installing using debian netinst ISO before and can choose DE from that but now the "Choose desktop environment" section was missing and this will installing a just the minimal base system without GUI, I don't know why so downloaded live cinnamon ISO, so now I'm started using debian 12 with cinnamon today, debian is not too "out of the box" like Linux Mint so after installation I still need to fix something, here are what I'm doing:

Can't use sudo: user is not in the sudoers file.

I'm not be able using command with sudo prefix, this problem can simply get fixed by adding new line in /etc/sudoers like below.

username ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

You need to login as superuser first by using su command then edit that file.

No online mirror, only get from cdrom in source.list

This is because by I'm using cdrom for updates source in my /etc/apt/source.list:

deb cdrom:[Official Debian GNU/Linux Live 12.5.0 cinnamon 2024-02-10T11:07:25Z]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware

To be able installing from online mirror like normal we can replace all this with Debian mirrors system backed by Fastly CDN:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm contrib main non-free non-free-firmware
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm contrib main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates contrib main non-free non-free-firmware
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates contrib main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-proposed-updates contrib main non-free non-free-firmware
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-proposed-updates contrib main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports contrib main non-free non-free-firmware
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports contrib main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security contrib main non-free non-free-firmware
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security contrib main non-free non-free-firmware

and the apt should works normally.

Internet connection need to be configured

After installation I'm unable to access to the internet so I'm finding the problem what cause this. Can't ping websites domain but can ping on DNS server. So this is just my machine can't resolve the DNS server and we can fix that by adding these line to /etc/resolv.conf.

nameserver 8.8.8.8

at this point I was connected to internet successfully but then I realise the "Software" app are still offline and it seems unable to detect my modem network interface (I'm using modem + mobile simcard), firstly we need to install openresolv:

sudo apt install openresolv

then we need to know what my modem interface name with ip link command.

The name will looks like lo, enp4s0, enp0s3 ... but in my case the modem are named enxac7deb60b118. I need to add this as new interface in /etc/network/interfaces to make it enabled by adding these lines at the end of file:

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug enxac7deb60b118
iface enxac7deb60b118 inet dhcp
	dns-nameserver 8.8.8.8

then restart network with sudo systemctl restart networking, but it recommended to reboot your system.

UPDATE 2024-06-30

Today I completely re-install my debian to use XFCE, after several consideration I think this is the best DE that fit me. Of course some issue occured but fortunately there are solution for each.

Mouse middle-click emulation

There is no such setting in XFCE, for long time I always set middle click emulation setting value manually in libinput but now I got better way to do it.

Add these setting to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/middle-mouse-button.conf:

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier "middle button"
   MatchIsPointer "on"
   MatchDriver "libinput"
   Option "MiddleEmulation" "on"
EndSection

then restart.

Unless you are using something ready to use distro like Linux Mint for normal fresh XFCE installation this is really needed to be configured particularly the whisker menu (Applications / Start menu), most people are using Super / Windows key to access start menu but in this XFCE case we need to do these configuration to able use start menu like normal.

Install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin: sudo apt install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin
Right click panel and open Panel Preferences... > Items then replace Applications Menu with Whisker Menu.
Open Keyboard setting, on Application Shortcuts add new shortcut: command: xfce4-popup-whiskermenu shortcut: Ctrl+Escape

make sure pressing that shortcut works, why are we not binding the shortcut to Super key instead? it is because that would causing conflict to other shortcut that using Super key (e.g. shortcut Super+E to open file manager).

Install this: github.com/hanschen/ksuperkey
Run ksuperkey -e 'Super_L=Control_L|Escape'

Now you should able to open start menu by pressing Super key and other shortcut using it also still working, but this setting is not presist you need to add the #2 command above to Session and Startup menu or whatever.

Fix thunar cannot use dav(s) protocol

Run command sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse gvfs-backends

bramaudi