Things to do after installing Debian Wheezy

I was going to have a great long list with everything but the kitchen sink like other sites, but in the end there wasn't much to do. Apart from the bug mentioned in my previous post, everything went smoothly. The installer asked me if I wanted to install non-free software and I said yes. When I booted into Gnome, it went into fallback mode. I'd been here before, but this time it was easier to fix, as the non-free repositories were already enabled:

aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree

My Wi-Fi card also required firmware, which I found in Add/Remove Software. (Yes, the same Wi-Fi card that was blocking my installation.)

But I could play MP3s out of the box and most of my videos too, with the exception of .mp4 files, which don't play because of a regression in a library which should be fixed soon.

Who said Debian is difficult? OK. I might need to add Adobe Flash from Add/Remove Software if I really want to watch BBC news or tubes, but I have a usable system pretty much out of the box, and good looking too. (Yes, I like Gnome 3.)

So the things to do after installing Wheezy are to install your video and Wi-Fi card firmware.

In my next post I'll look at some of what I think is the most essential software to add to Wheezy, although still in minimalist mode.