I recently installed Debian testing on my new laptop, an HP Pavilion dv5z. I recorded the core installation steps and the installation summary in the installation page for the dv5z, but I wanted to add additional details about how I personalized the install, which may be helpful for others if they want to make certain higher-level systems work or work better. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn between this sort of application-level installation and configuration detail, and the core operating system installation description. Feel free to suggest changes to either of the two pages about the dv5z, or to add other comments, at either ?the discussion page for the "Installing Debian On" page or ?the discussion page here.

Essentials

Inspired by Mark Pilgrim's list of essential software, I provide here a list of additional packages that I installed1 after installing Debian.

kde
powerful keyboard shortcut configuration, excellent window management features, and it's pretty
mplayer
plays it all
k3b
excellent CD-burning front-end
gimp
for editing graphics
inkscape
for editing vector graphics
synergy

excellent software KM2 solution

build-essential
for doing development
python-dev
ditto
mercurial
ditto
hgsvn
ditto
subversion
ditto
subversion-tools
ditto
exuberant-ctags
ditto
vim-gtk
for all your editing needs
gnash
as-of-yet-untested implementation of Flash
pidgin
All your instant messaging are belong to pidgin.
screen
Run any command line program in the background.
ktorrent2.2

Sometimes I use the original BitTorrent client behind screen; for everything else, there's KTorrent.

keychain
manage those SSH keys
sshfs
turn any SSH endpoint into a network filesystem
openssh-server
Even on a laptop, I occassionally want to SSH in.
network-manager-kde
Having two-click access to wireless selection is just too appealing.
ntp
Keep your time in sync.
ntpdate
ditto
powernowd
This seems to be the preferred way to manage CPU throttling.
ksensors
And this helps you see that your CPUs are being throttled.
mesa-utils
glxgears, of course
fglrx-driver

graphics acceleration; I cover this on the main dv5z installation page.

rar
open rar archives.
unison

for backups. Coexisting with rsync since I first discovered it.

sun-java6-jdk

for running XXE

  1. I primarily use synaptic, but occcassionally use apt-get. (1)

  2. Think KVM, but without the V. (2)

KDE

I use KDE as my desktop environment and window manager1. When I first started using KDE under Debian, I noticed that my GTK apps (e.g. Iceweasel and Synaptic) looked pretty bad, with an ugly default font and theme. They look fine under Gnome, though, and after some investigation, it looks like Metacity (the Gnome window manager) is choosing some sane defaults for font and theme. I'm not sure if the following is the best way to set the font and theme in KDE, but I discovered that the gtk-chtheme utility (from the package of the same name) is useful for choosing the look-and-feel of your GTK apps. It writes to the file $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0, but it seems to use an outdated format. You will need to update the file to have the following format:

include "/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
gtk-font-name = "FreeSerif 10"

Note that in the GTK configuration file, I am using the "?FreeSerif" font. I didn't mention this above (in "Essentials"), but I installed a bunch of additional fonts after installing Debian. I searched for "font" in Synaptic and installed any that sounded interesting.

Of course, font configuration for "KDE applications" is where you would expect, in the KDE Control Center. Go to Appearance & Themes > Fonts and you can lose yourself experimenting for a while. While you're in the Control Center, you may want to customize some of your keyboard shortcuts; these can be found in Regional & Accessibility > Keyboard Shortcuts2.

Unfortunately, this means that you have to change your font settings in two different places to keep them consistent. This isn't horrible, but it would be better to have a more natural, unified way to manage one's look-and-feel across desktop environments and graphical toolkits. This is something that could use improvement in Debian.

In Gnome, when I want something to start when my session starts (e.g. Synergy), I create a startup option in the Sessions configuration. I wasn't able to find a similar interface in KDE, so I just ended up creating shell scripts in $HOME/.kde/Autostart/, which, as the name would imply, are started when KDE starts. For example, I have a script named synergyc in this directory:

synergyc server-name

Note that these scripts need to be executable in order to be started by KDE. I tried using $HOME/.xsession for this in times past, but I never could get X to actually run commands from that file. I'd be happy to hear suggestions for improvement on this front.

  1. I'm still running GDM, though, because it's pretty and as far as I know KDM doesn't offer any features above and beyond GDM. (1)

  2. Question: Should I put any information here about Keyboard Shortcuts that I would suggest? (2)

TODO

Things I want to cover on this page, but don't (yet):

Things I haven't yet figured out: