[Discussion] Not a rant but a cry for help...

[pierrick]

I thought it or working sudo was a given on a minimalist text only system. Could be you hadn't installed enough to have working sudo.

That's entirely possible.

[sunrat]

sudo is to grant elevated privileges ie. root, to a normal user. If you didn't set up sudo during install it would take extra steps as root to enable it.
If you're going to log in to console boot, the best course would be to set a root password during install and log in as root to perform actions.

[Garthhh]

Try the Spiral Linux
An installer of Debian stable with choice of desktop, all the little details were resolved for me, a nice just works KDE install, connected to the Debian repo, Debian Stable without any fuss

I've only had to use Discover for normal update/install/remove functions
I compared Synaptic updates with Discover updates, got bored after the 1st week, same
Discover manages Flatpak reasonably well, for the couple of programs when I want newer features
I'm lazy & just need a daily driver that works

The Dev GeckoLinux, is helpful on the user forum & has done a similar thing for Suze

[pierrick]

@sunrat
I don't normally set up the root user at install time. After all, how many times do I have to "login as root" during normal operation. For those times where I need elevated privileges, sudo is enough, like when installing/removing packages, etc.
In the rare cases where I need true root login, I can use sudo bash or sudo su. Or am I completely wrong here?

@Garthhh
Very interesting proposition, thank you. I like the idea of being entirely dependent on the Debian packages.
However, being stubborn (probably beyond all reasonable expectation ) I'd like to still pursue the Debian installer avenue.

And now for the latest.
The install on the laptop, using graphical and no software (except base system: 144 files) worked well. I got a terminal prompt.
After the episode of not being able to install Plasma (see above), once logged in as root, it all fell in to place.
Report on running apps:

• all issues with Dolphin seem to have disappeared (except the erratic drag and drop, which is a Dolphin problem.)

• all issues with Chrome browser seem to have disappeared.

• I have yet to test Anydesk and Geany.

Maybe it's just starry eyes, but the laptop install seems more snappy than the problematic desktop install which I run side by side, and I'm not experiencing any issue so far.
Will keep posting on progress.

[pierrick]

Back for a couple of days before leaving the keyboard again.
Sadly, I started to notice odd behaviour on the laptop install.

• Loss of network connectivity when switching between wired and WiFi connections. Need to reset the laptop for the network interface to work.

• Libre Office Calc behaving inconsistently compared with a Libre Office install on KUbuntu: same operation works on KUbuntu, fails on Debian.

These are minor issues I could work with.
At this point however, my concern is that these minor issues may develop into major problems. In other words: what else is going to go wrong that I haven't seen yet? Considering the poor results I've had thus far I think it is a fair concern.

Any idea would be appreciated. Thanks.

[tynman]

I scrolled back up to your original post to review your hardware, to see if you were running something too new or weird for Debian's "old" Linux kernels, but it seemed pretty harmless .
But then I noticed on the last line: Wayland.
It might be worth it to try KDE with X11. I'm assuming that is still an option, and easy to try (i.e. maybe a reboot, or even just a logout/login if you know how to do that in KDE).