Basic Box

Builds a basic Debian 12 (Bookworm) installer which asks very few questions.

When more than one drive is present, the installer targets the smallest drive.

Runs on Debian 12.

The Basic Box installer creates a Debian 12 system with:

• full disk encryption (FDE)
• no root user
• an ordinary user called user with password basic
• locale and timezone set to Melbourne, Australia
• the GNOME desktop environment
• the UFW firewall installed and enabled
• the Mullvad VPN app installed and enabled with an interactive script which runs automatically on the first boot
• Tor Browser Launcher installed
• these Firefox extensions installed:
  • Dark Reader
  • Firefox Multi-Account Containers
  • KeePassXC-Browser
  • OneTab
  • Privacy Badger
  • uBlock Origin
• certain Firefox preferences set for better privacy and a simpler interface
• pipx installed
• yt-dlp installed
• ranger installed
• these GNOME changes:
  • Enable dark theme
  • Display date and battery percentage in top bar
  • Never blank screen, dim screen or suspend when inactive
  • Enable night light (makes display colour warmer at night)
  • Enable natural scrolling for mouse
  • Speed up trackpad and enable trackpad tap-to-click
  • Enable 9 permanent workspaces
  • Set cursor to blink indefinitely
• these GNOME extensions installed, enabled and configured:
  • Bluetooth Quick Connect
  • Dash to Dock
  • Disable Workspace Switcher
  • Hide Activities Button
  • NoAnnoyance v2
  • PaperWM
  • Quick Close in Overview
  • Space Bar
  • system-monitor
  • Ubuntu AppIndicator
• automatic login enabled
• fd-find (fd) installed
• ripgrep installed
• exa installed
• bat installed
• fzf installed
• zoxide installed
• htop installed
• ncdu installed
• aliases which add certain defaults to commonly-used utilities
• delta installed
• Git installed
• gitk installed
• keyd installed
• key remapping, which can be deactivated, which:
  • modifies the Backslash key to produce Meta when held and Backslash when tapped
  • modifies the CapsLock key to produce Control when held and Escape when tapped
  • modifies the Escape key to produce CapsLock
  • modifies the Tab key to produce Meta when held and Tab when tapped
• direnv installed
• Fira Code Nerd Font installed and set as the system-wide monospace font
• Starship installed
• HTTPie installed
• Nmap installed
• KeePassXC installed
• IPython installed
• Entomb installed
• MTR installed
• tree installed
• tldr-pages installed
• OfflineIMAP installed
• a global Git ignore file
• trash-cli installed and integrated with ranger
• Neovim installed and configured with LazyVim
• curl installed
• Bluetooth turned off when the system boots
• atool installed
• bandwhich installed
• whois installed
• smartmontools installed
• python-is-python3 installed
• zathura installed
• acpi installed
• Syncthing installed
• Lynis installed
• ClamAV installed
• Rootkit Hunter installed
• pyenv installed
• geckodriver installed
• JupyterLab installed
• TLP installed and configured so that batteries start charging at 75% capacity and stop charging at 80% capacity
• Libnotify installed
• Thunderbird installed
• wl-clipboard installed
• Podman installed
• fish installed and set as the interactive shell
• MAC address randomised
• a systemd service which warns when no VPN is managing traffic
• build-essential installed
• dbus-x11 installed
• Signal installed
• duf installed
• Mullvad Browser installed
• dict, dictd and dict-wn installed
• GNOME Shell extension manager installed
• a terminal prompt that displays the time a command started to run
• rsync installed
• Flameshot installed
• btop installed
• OpenSnitch installed
• ExifTool installed

Install the dependencies:

$ sudo apt install jq libnotify-bin make simple-cdd wget

Insert a flash drive and then:

$ make usb

Or to just create the installer image:

$ make image