Except for work computers with GNU/linux, the last of which was retired in 2008, my GNU/linux computers have been outdated hand-me-downs. And when the P4 I got back in 2010 went belly up, I figured it was time for trying a modern machine.

Note: I wasn’t going for a top-of-the-line gaming computer with high performance everything. Just a modern state of the art computer.

I wasn’t satisfied with the combination of price and specs on the desktop computers sold by the consumer electronic retailers, so I asked an old colleague who likes building his own computers (thanks Alexey!) to help me come up with an order for components that would work when I put it together. This is what I ordered:

• Main board: ASUS H170M-PLUS, Socket-1151
• CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 Skylake
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2133MHz 16GB
• SSD: Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB 2.5″ OEM
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda® 1TB
• Cabinet: Fractal Design Define S Black
• Power supply: Corsair CX500, 500W PSU

I won’t spend much time on the task of putting the parts together to make a working computer, suffice to say that with re-watching this video, frequent phone calls to Alexey, compared with close reading of the documentation (Alexey told me to do that), I got it working and was greeted by the fancy screen that has taken the place of the BIOS.

I tried, and gave up on making PXE boot work for the debian install on the UEFI BIOS, and put the debian-8.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso image on an USB flash drive. I then inserted the USB flash drive in one of the USB3 connectors on the front of the cabinet, pressed F10 in the UEFI BIOS, and then kept F8 pressed F8 until I got to the boot menu.

In the boot menu, I selected

UEFI: Generic Flash Disk 8.07, Partition 1 (7640MB)

and then pressed ENTER.

In the debian installer:

1. Selected the “Graphical installer”
2. Selected “English” as the installer language
3. Selected “Norway” as the time zone
4. Selected “en_US.UTF-8” as the locale
5. Selected “Norwegian” as the keyboard layout
6. Gave “lorenzo” as the computer name
7. Gave “hjemme.lan” as the domain name
8. Set the root password
9. I created a user for myself, and set the password
10. Partitioned the disks manually:
    1. Partitioned the 120GB SSD. I put the root partition on the SSD to get a quick startup of the system, and to get fast startup of applications. I also had to put an EFI partition here. Without an EFI partition, the base-installer failed with a “No space left on device” error message:
       

       Number	Size	File system	Name	Flags
       #1	1GB	fat32	efi	boot,esp
       #2	119GB	ext4	root

    2. Partitioned the 1TB HDD:
       1. I put the swap, sized to twice the physical memory, (something I’ve been doing since I installed my first GNU/linux box back in the 90-ies)
       2. To avoid SSD wear from frequent writing, I put the /var partition (where /var/log resides) on the spinning disk
       3. Finally, I made the rest of the disk the /home directory

       Number	Size	File system	Name	Flags
       #1	32GB	linux-swap(v1)	swap
       #2	100GB	ext4	var
       #3	868GB	ext4

11. In the installer, I selected a package mirror from Norway (it doesn’t really matter which one, because of the NIX), selected “No proxy”, and continued
12. I let the installer install GRUB on the hard disk
13. During the installation of the system, the installer stopped with the following error message:

    Unable to install busybox
    An error was returned while trying to instal lthe busybox package
    onto the target system.
    
    Check /var/log/syslog or see virtual console 4 for details

14. I googled for the error message, found this ubuntu bug report, and tried the following workaround from a comment on the bug, and the installer continued past the problem spot.The workaround/hack, was to boot the installer, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get a virtual console, and at the prompt in that console, type:

    # while true; do rm /var/run/chroot-setup.lock; sleep 1; done

    and then switch back to the installer in Ctrl-Alt-F1 and continue with the installation

15. I let the installer run until completion, and pulled the USB flash drive from the USB3 connection (probably not necessary, since pressing F8 was necessary to get to the boot menu in the first place), and let the computer reboot
16. The computer booted with the familiar debian gdm login screen, and a disappointing 1024×768 screen resolution
17. I logged in to see what the display settings of the desktop had to say, but the display setting had 1024×768 as the only choice
18. I let apt-get update the distribution

    apt-get update
    apt-get dist-upgrade

19. I rebooted again after the update had completed, but the update wasn’t enough to fix the screen resolution, the display still had 1024×768 as the only available resolution
20. This was my first test of Gnome 3 (when “gnome” in debian changed its meaning from the quite usable “Gnome 2” to “Gnome 3”, the old hardware on my previous debian computer wasn’t able to display anything at all), and I found it ugly and incomprehensible
21. So I installed MATE

    apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

    and rebooted and logged in again

22. This time, after logging in, I met something that looked very much like the old and familiar “Gnome 2” desktop, but still with 1024×768 as the only available display resolution
23. I edited /etc/apt/sources.list and added apt lines for jessie-backports

    # jessie backports (4.3 kernel)
    deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free
    

24. I installed the kernel, firmware and xserver-xorg-video-intel

    apt-get -t jessie-backports install linux-image-amd64 firmware-linux
    apt-get -t jessie-backports xserver-xorg-video-intel

25. After a new reboot I was up and running, and this time with 1600×1200 resolution on the display, which is the maximum the old display I was using would support
26. Since I got a working system by using packages from backports, I didn’t make the jump to debian testing immediately, but I figured I might as well get as new packages as possible from jessie-backports, so I created an /etc/apt/preferences file with the following contents:

    Package: *
    Pin: release a=jessie
    Pin-priority: 700
    
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=jessie-updates
    Pin-priority: 710
    
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=jessie-backports
    Pin-priority: 720
    

27. Then I did apt-get update followed by dist-upgrade and pulled in new versions of many packages

    apt-get update
    apt-get dist-upgrade

28. I used apt-get to install many familiar packages from my old system

    apt-get install xscavenger
    apt-get install default-jdk
    apt-get install chromium
    apt-get install flightgear
    apt-get install oolite

29. Like I always do on debian systems, I pulled in “real” firefox from Mint debian edition:
    1. I edited /etc/apt/sources.list file and added the apt lines for Mint debian edition

       # Linux Mint Debian Edition (has firefox)
       deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian import

    2. I installed the key for Mint debian edition

       apt-get update
       apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
       apt-get update

    3. I used apt to install firefox

       apt-get install firefox

30. I installed apticron that will check for updates daily and notify me about updates

    apt-get install apticron

31. Then I rebooted into the system I’m currently running

That’s it basically. Things seems to work out of the box, sound, video etc. (youtube doesn’t play in chromium, but it does play in firefox).