New laptop setup

pdo debian eng

My new laptop Framework (Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series)) arrived, all the hardware works out of the box on Debian Stable, and I'm very happy indeed.

This post has the notes of all the provisioning steps, so that I can replicate them again if needed.

Installing Debian 12

Debian 12's installer just worked, with Secure Boot enabled no less, which was nice.

The only glitch is an argument with the guided partitioner, which was uncooperative: I have been hit before by a /boot partition too small, and I wanted 1G of EFI and 1G of boot, while the partitioner decided that 512Mb were good enough. Frustratingly, there was no way of changing that, nor I found how to get more than 1G of swap, as I wanted enough swap to fit RAM for hybernation.

I let it install the way it pleased, then I booted into grml for a round of gparted.

The tricky part of that was resizing the root btrfs filesystem, which is in an LV, which is in a VG, which is in a PV, which is in LUKS. Here's a cheatsheet.

Shrink partitions:

note that I used an increasing size because I don't trust that each tool has a way of representing sizes that aligns to the byte. I'd be happy to find out that they do, but didn't want to find out the hard way that they didn't.

Resize with gparted:

Move and resize partitions at will. Shrinking first means it all takes a reasonable time, and you won't have to wait almost an hour for a terabyte-sized empty partition to be carefully moved around. Don't ask me why I know.

Regrow partitions:

Setup gnome

When I get a new laptop I have a tradition of trying to make it work with Gnome and Wayland, which normally ended up in frustration and a swift move to X11 and Xfce: I have a lot of long-time muscle memory involved in how I use a computer, and it needs to fit like prosthetics. I can learn to do a thing or two in a different way, but any papercut that makes me break flow and I cannot fix will soon become a dealbreaker.

This applies to Gnome as present in Debian Stable.

General Gnome settings tips

I can list all available settings with:

gsettings list-recursively

which is handy for grepping things like hotkeys.

I can manually set a value with:

gsettings set <schema> <key> <value>

and I can reset it to its default with:

gsettings reset <schema> <key>

Some applications like Gnome Terminal use "relocatable schemas", and in those cases you also need to specify a path, which can be discovered using dconf-editor:

gsettings set <schema>:<path> <key> <value>

Install appindicators

First thing first: app install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator, log out and in again: the Gnome Extension manager won't see the extension as available until you restart the whole session.

I have no idea why that is so, and I have no idea why a notification area is not present in Gnome by default, but at least now I can get one.

Fix font sizes across monitors

My laptop screen and monitor have significantly different DPIs, so:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

And in Settings/Displays, set a reasonable scaling factor for each display.

Disable Alt/Super as hotkey for the Overlay

Seeing all my screen reorganize and reshuffle every time I accidentally press Alt leaves me disoriented and seasick:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key ''

Focus-follows-mouse and Raise-or-lower

My desktop is like my desktop: messy and cluttered. I have lots of overlapping window and I switch between them by moving the focus with the mouse, and when the visible part is not enough I have a handy hotkey mapped to raise-or-lower to bring forward what I need and send back what I don't need anymore.

Thankfully Gnome can be configured that way, with some work:

This almost worked, but sometimes it didn't do what I wanted, like I expected to find a window to the front but another window disappeared instead. I eventually figured that by default Gnome delays focus changes by a perceivable amount, which is evidently too slow for the way I move around windows.

The amount cannot be shortened, but it can be removed with:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides focus-change-on-pointer-rest false

Mouse and keyboard shortcuts

Gnome has lots of preconfigured sounds, shortcuts, animations and other distractions that I do not need. They also either interfere with key combinations I want to use in terminals, or cause accidental window moves or resizes that make me break flow, or otherwise provide sensory overstimulation that really does not work for me.

It was a lot of work, and these are the steps I used to get rid of most of them.

Disable Super+N combinations that accidentally launch a questionable choice of programs:

for i in `seq 1 9`; do gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-$i '[]'; done

Gnome-Shell settings:

gnome-tweak-tool settings:

Gnome Terminal settings:

Thankfully 10 years ago I took notes on how to customize Gnome Terminal, and they're still mostly valid:

Other hotkeys that got in my way and had to disable the hard way:

for n in `seq 1 12`; do gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland.keybindings switch-to-session-$n '[]'; done
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-down '[]'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-up '[]'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings panel-main-menu '[]'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface menubar-accel '[]'

Note that even after removing F10 from being bound to menubar-accel, and after having to gsetting binding to F10 as is:

$ gsettings list-recursively|grep F10
org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Keybindings switch-to-tab-10 '<Alt>F10'

I still cannot quit Midnight Commander using F10 in a terminal, as that moves the focus in the window title bar. This looks like a Gnome bug, and a very frustrating one for me.

Appearance

Gnome-Shell settings:

gnome-tweak-tool settings:

Gnome Terminal settings:

Other decluttering and tweaks

Gnome Shell Settings:

Set a delay between screen blank and lock: when the screen goes blank, it is important for me to be able to say "nope, don't blank yet!", and maybe switch on caffeine mode during a presentation without needing to type my password in front of cameras. No UI for this, but at least gsettings has it:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 30

Extensions

I enabled the Applications Menu extension, since it's impossible to find less famous applications in the Overview without knowing in advance how they're named in the desktop. This stole a precious hotkey, which I had to disable in gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.apps-menu apps-menu-toggle-menu '[]'

I also enabled:

I didn't go and look for Gnome Shell extentions outside what is packaged in Debian, as I'm very wary about running JavaScript code randomly downloaded from the internet with full access over my data and desktop interaction.

I also took care of checking that the Gnome Shell Extensions web page complains about the lacking "GNOME Shell integration" browser extension, because the web browser shouldn't be allowed to download random JavaScript from the internet and run it with full local access.

Yuck.

Run program dialog

The default run program dialog is almost, but not quite, totally useless to me, as it does not provide completion, not even just for executable names in path, and so it ends up being faster to open a new terminal window and type in there.

It's possible, in Gnome Shell settings, to bind a custom command to a key. The resulting keybinding will now show up in gsettings, though it can be located in a more circuitous way by grepping first, and then looking up the resulting path in dconf-editor:

gsettings list-recursively|grep custom-key
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings ['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']

I tried out several run dialogs present in Debian, with sad results, possibly due to most of them not being tested on wayland:

Both gmrun and xfrun4 seem like workable options, with xfrun4 being customizable with convenient shortcut prefixes, so xfrun4 it is.

TODO

I'll try to update these notes as I investigate.

Conclusion so far

I now have something that seems to work for me. A few papercuts to figure out still, but they seem manageable.

It all feels a lot harder than it should be: for something intended to be minimal, Gnome defaults feel horribly cluttered and noisy to me, continuosly getting in the way of getting things done until tamed into being out of the way unless called for. It felt like a device that boots into flashy demo mode, which needs to be switched off before actual use.

Thankfully it can be switched off, and now I have notes to do it again if needed.

gsettings oddly feels to me like a better UI than the interactive settings managers: it's more comprehensive, more discoverable, more scriptable, and more stable across releases. Most of the Q&A I found on the internet with guidance given on the UI was obsolete, while when given with gsettings command lines it kept being relevant. I also have the feeling that these notes would be easier to understand and follow if given as gsettings invocations instead of descriptions of UI navigation paths.

At some point I'll upgrade to Trixie and reevaluate things, and these notes will be a useful checklist for that.

Fingers crossed that this time I'll manage to stay on Wayland. If not, I know that Xfce is still there for me, and I can trust it to be both helpful and good at not getting in the way of my work.