{"id":6948,"date":"2026-01-04T21:24:41","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T05:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wonghoi.humgar.com\/blog\/?p=6948"},"modified":"2026-01-05T19:08:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T03:08:57","slug":"debian-13-annoyances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wonghoi.humgar.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/04\/debian-13-annoyances\/","title":{"rendered":"Debian 13 annoyances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are some stupid shit in Debian 13 (as of to date) that doesn’t work right out of the box by 2026 because of questionable UX judgements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freshly minted user from the installer cannot sudo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I understand it’s good security practice to not leave any attack surface for fresh installations, but this one is just cargo-cult. The first thing you need to do out of any installation (not a live disc) is to sudo<\/code> and update the software. There’s no good reason to make the administrator who just installed the Linux grant sudo<\/code> rights to the first user he just created unless you want him to switch to the practice of regularly logging in as root<\/code> user!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So administrators are forced to do this dance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

su - root -c \"adduser $USER sudo\"<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Followed by a logout and relogin, which cannot be easily automated across distributions and installations because each desktop environment have their own logout commands. logout<\/code> itself is only when you are in text mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Debian’s installer should at least have the decency of asking if the first account created by the installer should be granted sudo<\/code> rights! Good user designs are not supposed to throw obstacles in the most common use cases no matter how justified the developer thinks it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
apt update<\/code> does not work out of the box<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you installed Debian from a full DVD (not the minimal version that requires the Internet to download the rest), good luck trying to update the apt<\/a> package manager:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Who in the right mind would believe an OS installed from the CD should behave differently than it’s downloaded online? WTF?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You are supposed to edit out the cdrom:<\/code> source \/etc\/apt\/sources.list<\/code>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
In most cases you don’t need or want the CD sources after you installed it unless you struggle with Internet bandwidth or don’t want the most updated versions. Here’s a one-liner to do it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo sed -i'.bak' '\/cdrom:\/d' \/etc\/apt\/sources.list<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
This wiil create a .bak<\/code> backup file in case if it deleted more things than you wanted and want to undo it.<\/p>\n
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There are some stupid shit in Debian 13 (as of to date) that doesn’t work right out of the box by 2026 because of questionable UX judgements: Freshly minted user from the installer cannot sudo I understand it’s good security … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
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