Debian installation Problem

[arochester]

it doesn't ship with a desktop by default

Debatable point. It comes with a box pre-ticked to install Debian Desktop Environment - Gnome. It needs to be unticked not to install it.

 

[Tolkem]

Debatable point. It comes with a box pre-ticked to install Debian Desktop Environment - Gnome. It needs to be unticked not to install it.

You're right. Guess since it's been a while I last installed it forgot about that, my apologies.

 

[lekkerlinux]

Precisely my point, it doesn't ship with a desktop by default, meaning you can opt to install just text mode and from there install everything else which is quite faster and much more reliable.

Yes but at a certain point you have to select some mirror site to get the desktop from and after going through every single choice I could not get any further than that. I tried sudo apt install lxqt or gnome, but that didn't work.

I liked the idea of a minimal system with only a browser and choosing only what you want, but Debian is too technical for me.

No worries! I am on Solus MATE now and so far it's been a great mate. Hope it doesn't break after updating some time in the future.

 

[lekkerlinux]

Debatable point. It comes with a box pre-ticked to install Debian Desktop Environment - Gnome. It needs to be unticked not to install it.

I should have used the text based install instead of the graphical install method, it's easy enough. Good tip!

 

[Tolkem]

I liked the idea of a minimal system with only a browser and choosing only what you want, but Debian is too technical for me.

I like my system as minimal as possible too. I just created a VM using the Debian netinst.iso and installed awesome-wm which I did before and even posted here https://www.linux.org/threads/debian-netinst-in-a-vm.21971/ at that time I used the stable stretch branch but now I wanted to play a bit with the testing/bullseye one and it was quite easy to set up. I'm not expert but I don't find Debian particularly "too technical".



I chose the first option Graphical install and proceeded with the installation following the debian installer instructions which are quite straightforward.

And I think I know why I never reached the install desktop screen, you said

at a certain point you have to select some mirror site to get the desktop from

Well, I did get an bad archive mirror error and can't remember whether or not it happened before but that might be the reason that the only screen I saw was this and not the one you and @arochester did


And of course I didn't remember seeing it cause I didn't see it in the first place. In any case I didn't care since my plan was to install awesome-wm so, just hit enter and continue.
Once the install process finished I rebooted the VM which did boot to a console



Logged in as root cause I needed to install sudo which is not installed by default



then I needed to add my user to the sudo group in order to be able to install programs and/or update/upgrade the system

usermod -aG sudo my_user

rebooted the system

systemctl reboot

Now I logged in with my regular user and edited sources.list file cause there wasn't a deb source for bullseye, I don't think this is the case for stable but I might be wrong though.



updated sources with

sudo apt-get update

and installed the packages I wanted to



15 minutes later ...





The whole process took around 45 minutes.

I tried sudo apt install lxqt or gnome, but that didn't work.

Maybe you needed to install sudo first as I found I had to.

 

[lekkerlinux]

I like my system as minimal as possible too. I just created a VM using the Debian netinst.iso and installed awesome-wm which I did before and even posted here https://www.linux.org/threads/debian-netinst-in-a-vm.21971/ at that time I used the stable stretch branch but now I wanted to play a bit with the testing/bullseye one and it was quite easy to set up. I'm not expert but I don't find Debian particularly "too technical".



I chose the first option Graphical install and proceeded with the installation following the debian installer instructions which are quite straightforward.

And I think I know why I never reached the install desktop screen, you said


Well, I did get an bad archive mirror error and can't remember whether or not it happened before but that might be the reason that the only screen I saw was this and not the one you and @arochester did


And of course I didn't remember seeing it cause I didn't see it in the first place. In any case I didn't care since my plan was to install awesome-wm so, just hit enter and continue.
Once the install process finished I rebooted the VM which did boot to a console



Logged in as root cause I needed to install sudo which is not installed by default



then I needed to add my user to the sudo group in order to be able to install programs and/or update/upgrade the system

usermod -aG sudo my_user

rebooted the system

systemctl reboot

Now I logged in with my regular user and edited sources.list file cause there wasn't a deb source for bullseye, I don't think this is the case for stable but I might be wrong though.



updated sources with

sudo apt-get update

and installed the packages I wanted to



15 minutes later ...




The whole process took around 45 minutes.


Maybe you needed to install sudo first as I found I had to.

That's correct, I should have looked up how to install sudo on my mother's smartphone, done that and then the DE.

I not a big deal, because I have found that all the old software programs on Debian stable doesn't always mean rock solid stability on my PC.

I am trying Solus MATE now and so far so good! Just had the game 0A.D. crash last night, it never crashed in Zorin 15.