How I use Beelink

I successfully installed Debian 13 (Trixie) onto a Beelink SEi8. There are a couple of important points to note:

• To access the boot menu, unsure the USB keyboard is plugged directly in to the Beelink, not via a hub.

• Install firmware-intel-graphics in order to get the full graphics resolution in X.

initramfs

When installing a new Debian kernel through apt, the initramfs is built, by default, with the MODULES=dep setting, which detects the hardware currently plugged into the device and only adds support for hardware it finds. This means that if you run your Beelink headless it will not boot with support for a USB keyboard. If you use LUKS, you will not be able to type your password on next boot. To get around this:

• sudoedit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/driver-policy

• Change MODULES=dep to MODULES=most

• sudo update-initramfs -u -k 6.12.111+deb13-amd64

• Verify it contains USB input support:

  lsinitramfs /boot/initrd.img-6.12.111+deb13-amd64 |
    grep -E 'xhci|usbcore|usbhid|hid-generic|evdev'