Debian 13 Minimal KDE Plasma Installation & Post-Install Tweaks and Tips

Debian 13 is one of the most stable and versatile Linux distributions available, and when combined with a minimal KDE Plasma setup, it offers a lightweight yet powerful desktop experience. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Debian 13 minimal installation process and share essential post-install tweaks to optimize your system for performance and usability. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, this step-by-step guide will help you set up Debian with KDE Plasma, ensuring a smooth and efficient Linux environment.

Introduction

During Debian install and in Software selection uncheck everything except standard system utilities

Minimal Plasma Desktop Install

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop plasma-nm sddm-theme-breeze kwin-addons -y

Reboot the system. This should give you basic minimal kde plasma setup for debian.

You can also remove some bloats if you have already install kde plasma full

sudo apt-get remove --purge 'kontrast*', 'k3b*', 'akregator*', 'imagemagick*', 'kmail*', 'apper*', 'dragon*','juk*','contact*','kmousetool*','kmouth*','kwrite*','kmag*','konqueror*','sieveeditor*'

Fix Debian ethernet or network not working

Sometimes after installations ethernet network may not work. we can fix it like this.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

comment this:

#iface enp4s0f1 inet dhcp				# comment this 

or your ethernet device name

Username is not in the sudoers file

To get root, then add your user to the sudo group, use:

su -
usermod -aG sudo YOUR_USERNAME
exit

or

su
nano /etc/sudoers

Add your user below %sudo EXAMPLE:

Defaults        env_reset,pwfeedback
Defaults        mail_badpass
Defaults        secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
Defaults        insults

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
USER_NAME    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Fastest mirror

Find fastest mirrors. A list of mirrors ranked by speed will be places in your home directory Copy this list to /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt install netselect-apt
netselect-apt
sudo apt-get update

Install flatpak

Install flatpak and add flathub

sudo apt install flatpak 
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
sudo apt install plasma-discover-backend-flatpak

Comment *-src from sources

Unless you are from developers you should remove the sources files for faster updates. Go to /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the src lines.

Install some necessary softwares

These are some basic softwares that I like.

sudo apt install synaptic breeze-gtk kde-gtk-config kde-config-gtk-style kde-config-gtk-style-preview vlc kdeconnect neovim htop neofetch gstreamer1.0-nice gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad python-is-python3 python3-pip ncdu thunderbird stacer 

Setup Bootsplash

Bootsplash may not be setup in debian. We can set it manually.

sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes plymouth-theme-breeze kde-config-plymouth kde-config-sddm sddm-theme-debian-breeze

Than add splash in /etc/default/grub

# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Update grub

sudo update-grub

setup plymouth

plymouth-set-default-theme -l
sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R bgrt

Mount Drives

You many want to mount external drivers.

check uuid

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
sudo blkid

add uuid in /etc/fstab at the bottom

# UUID=0d8130f6-ad5a-4df7-9c44-5001f3a950d8 /storage/data   ext4    defaults,noatime,x-gfvs-show 0 0

Mount in your desired location in replace with /storage/data

32-bit support

Enable 32bit package downloads. ( Required for some games )

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update

WINE

• wine from wine-hq install wiki

  wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
  sudo apt-key add winehq.key
  sudo echo "deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/ bullseye main" >  /tmp/winehq.list
  sudo cp -v /tmp/winehq.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
  

• wine from Debian

  sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update
  sudo apt install wine wine32 wine64 libwine libwine:i386 fonts-wine wine-binfmt
  

Mono & Gecko Download and put these here manually /usr/share/wine/

• Mono
• Gecko

Example: MONO

wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/9.0.0/wine-mono-9.0.0-x86.msi -P ~/.local/share/wine/mono

Gecko (both 32-bit and 64-bit):

wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi -P ~/.local/share/wine/gecko
wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86_64.msi -P ~/.local/share/wine/gecko

Install Nvidia Drivers

Install NVIDIA Drivers

sudo apt install nvidia-detect
nvidia-detect
sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64 nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree mesa-utils mesa-utils-extra 
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-libs:i386
sudo reboot
nvidia-smi
watch nvidia-smi

Debian Gaming

Install Steam

sudo apt install steam

Hardware Acceleration for Debian

For Intel:

sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free intel-gpu-tools i965-va-driver-shaders nvidia-vdpau-driver libnvcuvid1 libnvidia-encode1 vdpauinfo vainfo gstreamer1.0-vaapi gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad vulkan-tools

Add some environment variable in /etc/environment

# Intel
LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965
VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl

# NVIDIA
#LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=vdpau
#VDPAU_DRIVER=nvidia

check hw acceleration usage

vainfo
vdpauinfo
sudo intel_gpu_top
nvidia-smi -q | grep Decoder
watch -n 1 'nvidia-smi -q | grep Decoder'

enable hwacceleration for mpv add in $HOME/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

hwdec

non-free codecs and other media components

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
  ffmpeg \
  libavcodec-extra \
  ttf-mscorefonts-installer \
  libdvdcss2 \
  libdvd-pkg \
  ffmpegthumbnailer \
  ffmpegthumbs \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
  gstreamer1.0-libav \
  gstreamer1.0-tools \
  gstreamer1.0-vaapi \
  tumbler-plugins-extra \
  kdegraphics-thumbnailers && \
  sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg