10 Things to Do After Installing Debian

New to Debian? Discover 10 must-do post-installation tasks with our guide. Improve performance, security, and usability in no time

Enable Dark Mode

Search for “Tweaks”
On the left-hand side pane, click on ‘Appearance.’ Next to the applications drop-down menu, select the “Adawaita-dark” option.

Screenshot of the Tweaks app showing the dark mode option

Add your user to the sudoers file

Launch a terminal and follow these commands

su -

usermod -aG sudo newuser

*change your username with “newuser”

Installing Updates

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo reboot

Install a firewall

sudo apt install ufw -y

Deny all the traffic in and out for now by

sudo ufw default deny incoming  
sudo ufw default allow outgoing

You can allow traffic by: sudo ufw allow [port]

Changing your terminal

I personally like terminator as it is fast and allows multiple terminal sessions by split screen, you can install it by:

sudo apt install terminator -y

Enable Minimise Button

Search for “Tweaks”
On the left-hand side pane, click on “Windows Titlebars” enable the “minimise” option.

Screenshot of the Tweaks app where minimise button is enabled

Install GNOME extensions

GNOME extensions can be installed to extend the functionality of the GNOME desktop environment. Clipboard Indicator is the most important extension in my opinion, so to instal it, you must:

Install the browser extension: https://chrome.google.com/gnome
Then go to https://gnome.org/CI and install the extension

You should now see a clipboard history in the top bar.

Screenshot of the clipboard indicator extension in action

Enable Tray Icons

You can enable icons on your top bar by installing Tray Icons. Simply visit https://gnome.org/trayicon to enable it.

Screenshot of top bar after installing the extension

Install Microsoft Fonts

Microsoft Fonts should be installed because they are widely used and using the web without them would feel alienating. Simply type the following command into your terminal.

sudo apt install fonts-crosextra-carlito fonts-crosextra-caladea -y

Emojis

This allows you to display most emojis, but some will not display properly, so you must add these settings to /etc/fonts/conf.d/68-color-emoji.conf

sudo curl -o /etc/fonts/conf.d/68-color-emoji.conf https://gist.githubusercontent.com/alejandro097/9f656610ea3497ebc4f639c84094e3e8/raw

You might have to make this file*

sudo apt update && sudo apt install noto-fonts-emoji -y

Enable Snap and FlatPak

Snap and FlatPak packages are universal Linux app packaging formats. That is, they are compatible with any Linux distribution. Enable them by:

Open Software Center > Search for gnome software > Select the first entry > Enable Snap and FlatPak in Add-ons section > Restart Software Center

that’s it <3