Debian on Pinebook Pro via Daniel's installer

A step-by-step record of the installation of Debian Buster onto Pinebook Pro (removable SD card slot) using Daniel Thompson's unofficial installer, along with subsequent customisations to my own liking.

Last version I used: d86a81c2a4

Clone the installer

$ git clone https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pinebook-pro-debian-installer
$ cd pinebook-pro-debian-installer

Unmount the SD card

$ umount /media/conway/mmcblk0

Run the installer

$ ./install-debian BLKDEV=/dev/mmcblk0 CRYPT=y RELEASE=buster

This installs to the removable SD card slot. Reboot upon completion.

To avoid bloat, we leave the installation of a desktop environment and a window manager until later.

Disable swap

Using swap on an SD card is a bad idea, so we remove it.

$ sudo swapoff -a
$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

Comment out the swap line.

Fix the TTY (terminal) encoding

For whatever reason, the default encoding of the text terminal is ISO-8859-15. Since the locale has been set to UTF-8, box-drawing characters will be rendered incorrectly, and in particular nmtui will be too chaotic to handle by the time you get to the "Activate a connection" screen.

So first up we fix the encoding. The interface for doing so is itself a TUI (text user interface), so it too has broken borders initially:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

While we're at it, we also increase the terminal font size.

Connect to the internet

Having fixed the terminal's encoding, we then connect to the internet:

$ nmtui

Update and upgrade packages

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

Disable shutdown on power key

Since the Power key is dierectly above Backspace, it is very easy to shutdown by accident while typing. We disable this using logind:

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf

Uncomment the HandlePowerKey=poweroff line and change it to HandlePowerKey=ignore.

Minimal MATE and LightDM

$ sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment-core
$ sudo apt install lightdm

Then reboot.

Appearance settings

• Top panel > System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Appearance
  • [Theme] TraditionalOK
  • [Background]
    • No Desktop Background
    • Colours: Solid colour, black.
  • [Fonts]
    • Fixed width font size 11 (in line with the other families)
    • Details…
      • Automatic detection: OFF
      • Dots per inch (DPI): 120 (otherwise text is too small)
• Right Click top panel > Delete This Panel
• Right Click bottom panel > Properties
  • [General] Size: 32 pixels
• Unlock and Remove everything in the bottom panel, which shall henceforth be called the taskbar
• Add to taskbar and Lock the following
  • Main Menu, which shall henceforth be called Start
  • Workspace Switcher
  • Window List
  • Clock (flush right)
• Rename conway's Home to conway
• Start > System Tools > Caja
  • Edit > Preferences
    • [Views]
      • Default View new folders using: List View
      • List View Default Zoom level: 66%
  • View > Reset View to Defaults

Keyboard shortcuts

• Start > System > Preferences > Hardware > Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Home folder: Pine + H
  • Run a terminal: Pine + T
  • Hide all and focus desktop: Pine + D
  • Tile window to east (right): Pine + Right
  • Tile window to west (left): Pine + Left

Note that Pine key is Mod4.

MATE Terminal

• Edit > Profile Preferences
  • [General]
    • Allow bold text: TRUE
    • Terminal bell: FALSE
    • Use custom default terminal size: 80 columns, 48 rows
  • [Colours]
    • Foreground, Background, Bold and Underline
      • Use colours from system theme: FALSE
      • Built-in schemes: White on black
    • Palette
      • Built-in schemes: XTerm
  • [Scrolling]
    • Unlimited: TRUE
• Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Help Contents: Disabled (otherwise F1 won't work in TUI programs, e.g. alsamixer)

Bash customisation

Bash aliases

Add the following to .bash_aliases:

alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias gr='grep -E'
alias py='python3'

Bash prompt

Edit .bashrc and insert newlines in PS1 at the start and before the dollar sign.

Power management

$ sudo apt install mate-power-manager

• Start > System > Preferences > Hardware > Power Management
  • [On AC Power] Set display brightness to: 30%
  • [General]
    • When the power button is pressed: Do nothing
    • Notification Area: Always display an icon
• Add to taskbar and Lock
  • Notification Area (beside clock)

Then reboot.

Command line essentials

Python 3 was installed along with MATE.

$ sudo apt install git
$ sudo apt install w3m

w3m options

• [Display] Tab width: 2
• [Miscellaneous Settings] Save URL history: NO

No cookies appears to be the default now.

CJK fonts

$ sudo apt install fonts-noto-cjk

Then set the preferred font using fonts.conf.

Audio

$ sudo apt install alsa-utils
$ sudo apt install pavucontrol

To get the microphone to work, install asound.state, which is a quieter version of a Manjaro post-install asound.state:

$ sudo install -Dm644 asound.state /var/lib/alsa/
$ sudo alsactl nrestore

Cite this page

Conway (2022). Debian on Pinebook Pro via Daniel's installer. <https://yawnoc.github.io/code/pinebook-pro> Accessed yyyy-mm-dd.