Things To Do After Installing Debian 13

Below are some things that you probably want to do right after installing Debian 10 server.

Install Sudo

Login as root and install sudo

su  
apt-get update && apt-get install sudo  

Replace Nano With Vim

Still as root, install vim and uninstall nano. Skip this step if you are a nano user instead.

apt-get install vim -y
apt-get remove nano -y

Fix Adduser

By default, the adduser command is located in the /usr/sbin folder of your system. For some reason this is not part of your path when you are root, so lets make sure it is in future.

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/usr/sbin/"' >> /root/.bashrc

Now log out and in again for the change to take effect.

Add Yourself To Sudo Group

Now that you have adduser working, add yourself to the sudo user group.

adduser $MY_SUBUSER sudo  

Now log in as that subuser and do everything as them.

su $MY_SUBUSER

"Fix" VIM Copy/Pasting

Refer here.

Enable Syntax Highlighting In VIM

Instructions are here.

Fix Sources

Edit your sources file with:

sudo editor /etc/apt/sources.list

If you installed from the DVD image like I did, then you will likely have something like the following at the top:

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux trixie-DI-rc3 _Trixie_ - Official RC amd64 DVD Binary-1 with firmware 20250804-15:07]/ trixie contrib main non-free-firmware

Delete or comment-out that line from the top so that you are not reliant on having the CD anymore.

Update

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y  

Install SSH

If you didn't select SSH server during the installation, then I would suggest installing SSH at this point.

sudo apt-get install ssh

Set VIM to be the default editor (crontab)

You only need to do this if you didn't uninstall nano.

echo 'export EDITOR=vim' >> $HOME/.bashrc
sudo update-alternatives --config editor

Install byobu

sudo apt-get install byobu -y

Install BASH Completion And Command Not Found Packages

Install these packages to help you install packages through the use of tab-completion and when it finds that you entered an incorrect package name, suggesting the real one you may want.

sudo apt update \
  && sudo apt-get install command-not-found bash-completion -y \
  && sudo apt update \
  && sudo update-command-not-found

You may not see the effects until you log out and in again (SSH reconnect).

Other Packages

Finally, here is a list of system monitoring packages I like to install to make my life easier:

sudo apt install sysstat ncdu htop nload pydf iotop -y

Speed Up Boot

You may wish to reduce the grub boot timeout to just 1 second to speed up reboots etc.

Change TTY Font Size

I find that I don't like the default font size in the TTY so I run the following to change it:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

This is particularly useful for Proxmox guests.

Qemu Guest Agent

If you are running Debian 13 as a KVM/Proxmox guest then you probably want to install the qemu-guest-agent package so that it can be better managed by the hypervisor.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install qemu-guest-agent -y

References

• How To Add and Delete Users on Debian 10 Buster
• LinuxConfig.org - How to install missing ifconfig command on Debian Linux
• LinuxQuestions.org - can't paste into vim
• Ask Ubuntu - apt-get autocompletion of package name is broken
• Unix & Linux - How to implement package install suggestion on Debian?