Hey, this post is about installing Debian 13 + KDE Plasma via the live ISO and overcoming initial issues I encountered while doing so on my old laptop (and a test install on a Surface Pro 7). The problems I encountered would have been enough to turn me off Debian/KDE if it were my first ever install of them/Linux in general, and searching for solutions gave a lot of unclear results. So I wanted to share some of the stuff I ran into, in the hopes it can help other people who want to try KDE with Debian :)
Sections
Background and Why Debian/Plasma?
- Finding the right ISO (kde live)
- Secure Boot
- iBus issue
- KDE Wallet issue
- Firewall
- Repos
- Third Party Software
- Drivers
- Clock issue
- Sleep/Hibernation issue
- On-screen Keyboard
- Mint apps
Background and Why Debian/Plasma?
I had been testing Debian 12 on one of my laptops over the course of several months this past year. I wanted to try out a couple things like different desktop environments, graphics tablet drivers, and Waydroid on actual hardware, without disturbing my main PC, and also become more familiar with base Debian because of a potential future where Ubuntu-based stuff is too annoying to use (forcing snaps, replacing coreutils, other arbitraty choices by canonical). While testing I came to be quite fond of KDE Plasma's layout, features, and customizability, but still personally prefer simpler desktops like Xfce or IceWM with antiX (I don't do complex stuff, so simple works for me). After trying out all I wanted, the laptop was a bit of a mess with stuff installed/uninstalled, and my partner had started using it because her laptop's bluetooth was busted. We decided to swap laptops and I did a fresh install of Debian 13 KDE, as that had been the most used desktop recently and I wanted to see what the Debian live ISO experience was like (much easier than the DVD ISO).
Debian itself is very customizable, stable, and has long term support (13 will have security updates until 2030), but it is missing a lot of user-friendly stuff out of the box. Plasma can fill that gap and has a very 'alternate universe windows 11' feel, as if the style and intuitive usability of Windows 7 had actually carried over but with new stuff added. It shows thumbnails of images contained in a folder, on the folder icon itself, which includes rendering html pages with their css styling. It has a conventional desktop layout with the taskbar/panel at the bottom, but it also lets you totally change that however you want by making docks, universal context menus like MacOS, or swapping the application menu for a tablet-like dashboard. When paired with Debian, it gives you the choice to log into a separate Wayland or X11 desktop session from the login screen very easily (which can help solve/troubleshoot issues sometimes). It also comes with a graphical app store that will notify you when software updates are available, and common streaming/video codecs preinstalled, which base Debian does not. There are many more QoL improvements that Plasma adds to base Debian, but even with all of these things it is still not quite at the user-friendliness of Mint's Cinnamon out of the box. This can be improved by doing the things Mint does like adding a firewall, timeshift, GPU drivers, etc.
So, I guess this is for people who are new-ish to Linux and are insterested in trying KDE Plasma with the less locked-in nature of Debian, and are willing to do some annoying work. Although, Linux Mint Debian Edition (only available with Cinnamon desktop) and MX Linux KDE edition are without a doubt faaaarrrrr better/easier user experiences, lmao.
Problems & Solutions
- Finding the right ISO: The Debian downloads page is a bit of a mess by modern standards, but on the right hand side under the title "Try Debian live before installing" is a link labelled 'Live KDE' which will provide a direct download, or 'live torrents' will take you to a page where you can download the torrent file 'debian-live-13.2.0-amd64-kde.iso.torrent' (. numbers might change over time). Once downloaded, this ISO image can be installed like any distro, and it comes with the easy to follow 'Calamares' graphical installer.
- Secure Boot: Debian has support for Secure Boot, so if you are installing it on a laptop you can leave secure boot enabled and enroll the 'MOK keys' after install (there should be a prompt during install that will tell you how to do this, if necessary). This was necessary for my laptop as it would log a bunch of security errors in it's limited boot memory, even with secure boot turned off, that would cause it to stop booting after a while when that memory was full (as far as I understand the issue). Secure Boot may not be necessary for/present on all laptops though. Here is Debian's documentation on enrolling MOK keys in case it does not work automatically. Debian CAN be installed without Secure Boot also, as can any operating system. Accessing and enabling Secure Boot from your UEFI/BIOS is unique to each device/manufacturer, search online something like 'device/manufacturer name uefi bios secure boot'.
- iBus issue: Immediately post install I started getting a notification (in the Wayland session) about an 'iBus virtual keyboard' issue. The notification tells you to navigate to 'virtual keyboards' in the settings (actually uses outdated settings names) and directly choose the iBus virtual keyboard from there. Doing that then tells you to alter a config file to edit out certain settings, which also doesn't work. Overall this is an awful onboarding process to a new desktop, and disabling the virtual keyboard or switching to a third party one do not solve the issue/make the notification go away (disabling actually makes your physical keyboard not work in wayland O_O). What worked for me was running 'im-config' which can be reached by searching 'im-config' in the application menu and clicking 'Run im-config', then following the prompts it gives in the graphical interface ('ok' then 'yes') until I could choose 'do not activate any IM from im-config and use desktop default'. Since then the notification has gone away and physical keyboards work as intended.
- KDE Wallet issue: This occurs if you choose 'login automatically' for your account during install, it wants to create separate encryption files for storing your WiFi password or something. Just don't enable automatic login during install, it is best to have some kind of password lock on all devices anyway. If you did allow automatic login, this can be changed in the 'users' setting by unchecking 'log in automatically' on your user account, and restarting/relogging.
- Firewall: Debian KDE does not come with a firewall pre-installed. Search for 'ufw' in the software manager (Discover) and install it, you can then manage the firewall graphically in the KDE settings firewall section (turn it on if it didn't automically do so).
- Repos: Base Debian does not have 'non-free' or 'contrib' software respositories added automatically. These repos have a bunch of useful proprietary software that you may need, and are almost always enabled on downstream distros so that users can access whatever software they want. They can be added easily in Synaptic Package Manager (which needs to be installed first from Discover as it does not come with KDE) by clicking 'Settings' then 'Repositories' and manually clicking through every repository present which will allow the 'Section(s)' line to be edited. Add the terms 'non-free' and 'contrib' to each repo, with a space in between each term. It should read something like 'main non-free-firmware non-free contrib'. This can all also be done by manually editing the file '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources' adding 'contrib non-free' after 'main non-free-firmware' on any line that is present. You may also want to disable the 'backports' repo by unchecking it in the 'Repositories' section of Synaptic or Discover, if it is enabled (not always the case, but it can cause conflicts if you don't need to use it for newer software).
- Third Party Software For software that is not present or out of date in the base Debian repositories/Discover Store, you can use third party sources like Flatpaks, Snaps, or direct downloads of AppImages and .deb files. In Discover you can just search for the 'Flatpak Backend' and/or 'Snap Backend' packages to install, which will automatically incorporate Flatpaks and/or Snaps into the software centre for you. Some developers may offer native Debian packages (.deb) for direct download; if you search and install 'GDebi' in Discover, you can right-click on .deb files and 'open with Gdebi' which will automatically install them + add them to the menu (and automatically replace an outdated version if you do this again). Some developers may also have a list of commands to copy/paste into the terminal to install their software, just follow their instructions. And some developers may offer AppImages for direct download, once downloaded right-click the file then properties>permissions and check 'allow executing file as a program' (these don't automatically get added to application menu without extra work).
- Drivers: This may be required if you have an nvidia graphics card, or some other device that isn't already covered by the built in drivers of Linux. For nvidia cards, search for and install 'nvidia-detect' and also 'firmware-misc-nonfree' via Discover or Synaptic. After install you have to run 'nvidia-detect in a terminal by typing it in and hitting enter, it will detect if one of their proprietary drivers is available for your card, and guide you through prompts to install it (if needed/wanted, it may run perfectly fine with the open source nouvea driver for nvidia cards built into Linux). For other devices, search online for 'devicename linux drivers' as many products offer instructions on how to install specifically for Debian.
- Clock issue: I had a problem on the Surface Pro 7 where the clock was wrong, not syncing with a network, and the option to 'automatically update date/time' was greyed out in the settings. Searching for and installing 'systemd-timesyncd' via Discover or Synaptic solved this problem for me.
- Sleep/Hibernation issue: This may effect people using proprietary nvidia graphics drivers, where the screen remains black and won't power back on after a sleep/suspend. Solutions to this seem to be per device, on our Asus laptop the open source nouveu driver is used which works with sleep/suspend. When using proprietary nvidia drivers, the package 'nvidia-suspend-common' may need to be installed via Discover/Synaptic, and the suspend/hibernate/resume services enabled manually. Some posts online also report the opposite (disabling those services) worked for their devices *shrugs*. Hibernate however, does not work with Secure Boot enabled in Debian, because it can not guarantee the swap file is unchanged. The easy solution there (disabling secure boot) may cause problems for some laptops, like issues installing certain software/codecs :(
- On-screen keyboard: Another problem with the Surface Pro 7 test, and what turned me off using Debian KDE there, was the on screen keyboard would not open on demand. This was the case for both the in built iBus virtual keyboard and the third party Maliit keyboard. They both would open when text boxes were clicked on, except in a few certain apps. I have no solution for this, maybe Onboard would have worked (another third party osk) as it's applet/widget does allow manual opening in Mint, but I did not test this before giving up.
- Mint apps: If you want some familiar and easy to use apps that come standard on Linux Mint, they can be downloaded from the software manager. 'Timeshift' is a simple backup utility that Mint prompts you to set up on first login, and is available for Debian (just set up as you do in Mint, default was 'RSYNC', then backup 5 times per day I think). The Mint usb writer/formatter app ('mintstick') is also available in Debian/Discover, these are very simple to use for burning future ISOs.
Thanks for reading!