The Essentials on Various Distros

essentials.md

There's a core set of packages I just expect to be present on any *nix box I use.

Debian

apt-get install man wget curl vim traceroute bind9-dnsutils chrony

vim on Debian will turn on visual mode when you highlight text. This drives me bonkers. You can disable it with :set mouse-=a in vim, or without the leading : by putting it in ~/.vimrc. (Source).

Configure Chrony with a few hosts from https://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/StratumOneTimeServers if this will be in the NTP pool. Otherwise the default is usually pretty good.

I prefer to set up a mirror rather than relying on the round-robin default of ftp.us.debian.org. You can do some tests at https://www.debian.org/mirror/list but it's easier to use https://manpages.debian.org/bullseye/apt/apt-transport-mirror.1.en.html

I have an incomplete list at http://imgs.n1zyy.com/debian-mirrors.us.txt but you absolutely shouldn't rely on this.

Then you can do something like:

deb mirror://imgs.n1zyy.com/debian-mirrors.us.txt bullseye main
deb-src mirror://imgs.n1zyy.com/debian-mirrors.us.txt bullseye main

Alternative to finding faster mirrors

apt-get install netselect-apt
netselect-apt

This will give output ending something like:

The fastest 10 servers seem to be:

	http://mirror.i3d.net/debian/
	http://la.mirrors.clouvider.net/debian/
	http://mirrors.xtom.com/debian/
	http://mirror.keystealth.org/debian/
	http://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/debian/
	http://mirror.us.oneandone.net/debian/
	http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/
	http://mirrors.namecheap.com/debian/
	http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/debian/
	http://mirrors.gigenet.com/debian/

Of the hosts tested we choose the fastest valid for http:
        http://la.mirrors.clouvider.net/debian/

Writing sources.list.

I pull the "fasted valid for http" one up to the top of the list, put it in /etc/apt/mirrors.txt, and change sources.list to use it as mirror+file:/etc/apt/mirrors.txt.

Common

Setting a hostname

• Edit /etc/hostname (and perhaps /etc/hosts for 127.0.0.1)
• hostname --file /etc/hostname for an immediate change. (Your shell prompt won't auto-update.)