Tebian

A usability layer for Debian. Debian 13 (trixie) underneath, a Sway (Wayland) desktop on top, and one fuzzel-driven Control Center for everything in between. Everything is plain, readable bash.

Website: tebian.org Version: see VERSION — 3.2.0 at the time of writing License: MIT

Install

From the ISO (x86_64 PCs)

Download the latest ISO and its checksum from GitHub Releases, verify it, and write it to a USB stick (Ventoy, Rufus in DD mode, balenaEtcher, or dd all work):

sha256sum -c tebian-*.iso.sha256
sudo dd if=tebian-YYYYMMDD.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

The ISO boots on UEFI and legacy BIOS machines. The live session logs in automatically and starts the text-mode installer, which offers:

• erase a disk, or install alongside Windows / another Linux (dual-boot)
• optional full-disk encryption
• Desktop (Sway), Server with SSH + firewall, or bare server modes
• WiFi set up in the installer carries over to the installed system

Boot menu entries: the default copies the live system into RAM (fast, and the USB can be removed); low memory runs straight from the USB for machines with around 2 GB of RAM; safe graphics adds nomodeset for GPUs that show a black screen.

Live session login: user user, password user (passwordless sudo). You only need this if you leave the installer — restart it with sudo tebian-installer. cat /etc/tebian-release shows which build you are running.

On an existing Debian 13 system

curl -sL tebian.org/install | bash

Needs Debian 13 (trixie) or newer, including Raspberry Pi OS and Armbian images built on trixie — this is the way to install on ARM boards. It asks whether to set up the Tebian desktop or a hardened headless server.

Using it

Keys	Action
Super+D	App launcher
Super+S	Control Center (settings)
Super+A	App drawer
Super+Enter	Terminal
Super+Shift+/	Keybinding cheat sheet

The Control Center (Super+S) covers WiFi, Bluetooth, audio, displays, themes, updates and power, with more under More, including:

• Desktop & UI → Font Rendering — hinting and subpixel toggles (defaults: medium hinting, RGB subpixel)
• Software → Graphics Drivers — switch Mesa between Debian stable and trixie-backports for newer GPU drivers
• Drives — USB automount, a Windows-style repair offer for drives with filesystem errors, safe eject, and formatting a USB drive back into one partition (Drive Doctor)
• security profiles, performance tweaks, containers and self-hosting templates, backups

11 themes ship in-tree (glass — the default — cyber, dracula, everforest, gruvbox, material, nord, paper, rose-pine, solid, tokyo-night), each with matching wallpaper, bar, notification, lock screen and terminal colours.

Structure

bootstrap.sh        # Mode picker (desktop / server) used by install.sh
install.sh          # Remote installer (curl | bash)
tebian.conf         # Per-machine manifest applied by tebian-rebuild
scripts/            # Control Center, menus, installer, ISO builder, tools
configs/            # sway, kitty, mako, greetd, udev rules, themes
modules/            # core/ (security), hw/ (x86, pi)
config/             # live-build inputs (boot menu, templates)
assets/             # wallpapers, plymouth splash

Building the ISO

On a Debian 13 machine with Podman, from the directory that contains tebian-os/:

./build.sh --release   # container build of the committed tree

or directly on a Debian host: bash tebian-os/scripts/build-iso.sh --release. --release builds only committed files (git archive HEAD) and records the commit in /etc/tebian-release; without it the working tree ships as-is, which is meant for development. A .sha256 file is written next to the ISO. Test boots: bash tebian-os/scripts/test-vm.sh --boot-only (add --bios or --secureboot).

Uninstall

bash ~/Tebian/scripts/uninstall.sh removes Tebian's scripts and configs and, asking before each step, reverts the system changes it made.

Manifesto

See MANIFESTO.md.