![[Day 01] - My Journey from Laptop to Lab: Building a Headless Debian Server for DevOps & AI](https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=1000,height=420,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fswzzwkzc6k94wlr7qj35.webp)
AselaHey everyone! As an undergraduate always looking to get my hands dirty, I decided it was time to...
Hey everyone! As an undergraduate always looking to get my hands dirty, I decided it was time to level up my old Dell Inspiron 15-3567. Instead of letting it gather dust running a resource-heavy desktop OS, I embarked on a mission: transform it into a lean, mean, headless Debian server specifically for my DevOps and Agentic AI experiments.
This isn't just about getting a machine running; it's about deeply understanding the underlying tech. I hope to learn lot of fundamental concepts throughout the process and hope to share my experience with you.
Also appreciate your supportive comments and ideas, because I’m not an expert at all and I learn things by searching and asking by AI.
Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve been up to, and more importantly, what I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way!).
My Dell Inspiron, sporting an Intel Core i3-7100U and 8GB of RAM, was running Linux Mint 21. While Mint is fantastic for daily use, my inxi -Fxxxrz output revealed its Achilles' heel for my new ambitions: 80% RAM usage just at idle! That's not going to cut it when I want to run large language models (LLMs) and Docker containers.
The goal became clear: strip down the OS to the absolute essentials to free up as much RAM as possible.
When I search thought what will be the best OS to try for me that can learn things and setup my AI and DevOps environment while learning, Gemini suggest me to try the Debian 12, but when I search on the Bing I discovered that Debian 13 is also available.
Then Why I try some old, staff, So I decided to learn something new and ignore the Gemini suggested Debian 12 "Bookworm" and download the Debian 13 "trixie", Because I don’t trust AI always.
As Gemini mentioned here are the feature that I can achieve through the Debian
Minimalism & Performance: A headless Debian server (no fancy graphical desktop environment) can idle at an incredible 150-200MB of RAM. This means nearly 7.5GB of my 8GB RAM is available for actual AI tasks!
Industry Standard: Debian is the bedrock for many enterprise servers and forms the base for Ubuntu, making it invaluable for real-world DevOps skills.
Stability: For a dedicated lab, I need something that won't randomly break, letting me focus on my projects, not OS debugging.
The Gemini also suggest me to try “Arch Linux” as “As an undergraduate, nothing teaches you how Linux actually works better than an Arch installation”. But right now I think It’s better to try the “Debian way" fist and then move to the Arch later.
The actual reason is that always I use the Debian based OS for my servers and then I wanna study how to build the Debian base server from ground up.
This was my first major learning curve! First I login into to the my laptop using SSH though the local network. That was the first time I log to my laptop using the ssh , Most time I used the Anydesk for that.
Then I downloaded the mini.iso , using the wget command and I also explore the current available block devices using the lsblk command which is stands for List Block Devices.
Once I got onedrive block, I decided to flashed downloaded os into it, I used the dd commands for that. (a powerful tool that overwrites everything, so always double-check your target drive, folks!).
I thought I was golden, but then the installer hit me with this:
The Revelation: My Wi-Fi and Ethernet need "Non-Free" Firmware!
The messages ath10k/QCA9377 and then later rtl_nic weren't just random errors. They were the installer politely (but firmly!) telling me that my Qualcomm Atheros Wi-Fi and Realtek Ethernet chips needed proprietary binary files to function.
These are "non-free" not because you have to pay for them, but because their source code isn't openly available, which conflicts with Debian's strict "free software" philosophy in its default installers.
The Solution: I had to scrap that mini.iso and download the official Debian 13 Netinst ISO that includes non-free firmware. This version is a godsend for modern laptops as it bundles those closed-source blobs, allowing the hardware to actually turn on.
Then I started to make bootable device using newly download ios, use the same dd commands, let’s see what happened next in day 02 blog.
I'm excited to get this server online and start diving into Docker, Ollama, and building my first Agentic AI prototypes. Stay tuned for Part 2!
Originally posted : https://blog.zasela.site/day-01-my-journey-from-laptop-to-lab-building-a-headless-debian-server-for-devops-and-ai