In this article we will go through the installation of Debian 12 (Bookworm) with the KDE Plasma desktop, keeping the original screenshots because they are still useful for identifying each step of the Bookworm installer. The screenshots come from Debian 12 and remain applicable to the Bookworm branch, whose final point release is Debian 12.15.
Why KDE Plasma?
KDE Plasma is one of the most complete and configurable desktop environments available in Debian. Compared with GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, and other alternatives, Plasma stands out for its customization options, integrated tools, and detailed system settings. That does not make it objectively “better” for every user: the best desktop depends on your hardware, workflow, and preferences.
Debian 12 ships KDE Plasma 5.27.5. Plasma has significantly improved its resource usage compared with much older generations, but it is not accurate to claim that it is always lighter than Xfce or LXQt: actual memory and CPU use depends on enabled services, visual effects, applications, and hardware.
Plasma lets you customize global themes, window decorations, icons, cursors, panels, widgets, shortcuts, virtual desktops, effects, the lock screen, SDDM, and many other elements. It also integrates closely with KDE applications such as Dolphin, Konsole, Kate, Spectacle, and Discover.
Download Debian 12 Bookworm
To follow this guide today, use the final Debian 12 image, Debian 12.15. Because Debian 12 is no longer the current stable release, its installation images are stored in the Debian archive. Do not use the generic current path expecting Bookworm: that path now points to Debian 13.
DVD image for amd64: official Debian 12.15 amd64 DVD archive. If you have a reliable Internet connection, you can instead use the smaller netinst image: Debian 12.15 amd64 netinst. Verify the ISO SHA256 checksum before writing it to installation media.
This example uses the amd64 architecture, which is appropriate for the vast majority of x86-64 PCs. Debian 12 was released for several other architectures, although the set covered during LTS is smaller. Starting with Debian 12, official installation images can include firmware from the non-free-firmware component, so the separate “unofficial firmware” images required by older Debian releases are no longer the normal path. You can install on physical hardware or in a virtual machine. For physical hardware, create a bootable USB drive with one of the tools linked below.
How to create a bootable USB: Rufus, Ventoy, Etcher, YUMI, and other tools
How to create a bootable USB drive with balenaEtcher
1. Boot the graphical installer
Configure the machine’s UEFI/BIOS firmware to boot from the USB drive or other installation medium. When the Debian menu appears, select Graphical install. The graphical and text installers perform essentially the same installation tasks; the graphical option is simply more convenient for a workstation setup.
Next, the installation program will allow us to select the language, in our case we will select “Spanish – Español” in the list and click on the continue button
Next, the installation wizard will ask us for our geographical location. This data will be used to establish our time zone and regional settings, in our case we will select Spain, but you must choose yours
The next step is to select the language of our keyboard, depending on the keyboard you have, be free to select the option that suits your keyboard and click the continue button.
2. Configure networking, hostname, and users
The installer will first try to configure the network automatically. IPv4 autoconfiguration uses DHCP, while IPv6 supports automatic configuration and DHCPv6. If your network does not provide automatic configuration, the installer lets you enter the IP address, prefix/netmask, gateway, and DNS servers manually.
The next step is to establish the name of the equipment we are installing, for which we write the desired name in the edit box and click continue. Feel free to choose whatever name you want for your PC.
The installation program will then ask for the domain name. We specify the same in the edit box and click continue.
At this screen you can set a password for the root account. If you do, use a long, unique password and reserve the account for administration. Debian also supports a particularly useful workstation setup: leave both root password fields empty. The root login is then disabled and the first regular user is granted administrative access through sudo.
Now it’s time to specify the full name of the user who will use the device. This is the name that will be displayed, it can be your real full name or how you would like your computer login account to be displayed. Example: Juan Pérez, Pablo Díaz…, in our case we call him “Administrator”, but you can specify the one you want.
The next information requested is which user will use the previous account to access the system, it does not have to match, but generally we use something similar. Note that by convention users are lowercase.
Next we will set the password for our new user as shown in the following image, it is advisable to use a good password.
Now let’s choose the time zone. In our case we used the “Peninsula” one as shown in the following image, feel free to choose yours.
3. Partition the disk
This is the point where you should stop and double-check the selected disk. This guide uses “Guided – use entire disk”, which is appropriate for a clean installation on a dedicated drive. It deletes the existing partitions and data on the selected disk. If you need dual boot, encryption, LVM, RAID, or a custom layout, choose a different partitioning strategy.
Now we select the disk where the partitions will be made and click continue
In this initial guide, we recommend choosing the “All files in one partition” option, this is also a topic that will be covered in later articles.
The installer displays the proposed layout before writing anything to disk. On a machine booted in UEFI mode, the layout includes an EFI System Partition (ESP), plus the main filesystem and, depending on the selected scheme, swap space. BIOS/Legacy installations use a different boot layout. Check the target disk, sizes, and filesystems before choosing “Finish partitioning and write changes to disk”.
We confirm so that the changes are applied and continue.
4. Install the base system and KDE Plasma
Debian will now install the base system. The duration depends on the installation medium, storage speed, and —if you are using a network mirror— your Internet connection.
Once the previous step is completed, we could analyze other installation media, but in this case we will select no.
It will also ask us for a network replica which we could select if we are installing the system and we have an internet connection in it. If not, we simply select no and continue.
Here we can choose if we want to contribute and send usage statistics for software packages, this is up to you, in our case we will select no.
When the software selection screen appears, keep “Debian desktop environment” selected, uncheck GNOME if necessary, and select “KDE Plasma”. Also keep “standard system utilities” enabled. On Debian 12 this installs the Plasma 5.27 branch —the Bookworm plasma-desktop package is 5.27.5— together with SDDM and the normal desktop utilities.
Now there is only a little left during the installation process while a screen like the following is displayed
Once the installation is complete, a screen like the following will be displayed
5. First boot into KDE Plasma
Congratulations! The base Debian 12 installation with KDE Plasma is complete. Remove the installation media when prompted and let the machine boot from the disk where Debian was installed.
Below is the boot menu of the operating system, which will start the first option automatically in a few seconds
On the SDDM login screen you can choose the desktop session. On Debian 12, Plasma/Wayland is the default session. For most users it makes sense to try Wayland first, especially on HiDPI, touchscreen, and mixed-resolution multi-monitor systems.
The next screenshot shows how to select Plasma (X11). Treat this as a compatibility fallback, not a mandatory step: switch to X11 if a specific application, graphics driver, remote-desktop/capture tool, or workflow has problems under Wayland. If Wayland works properly on your hardware, there is no reason to change it.
Once the change is made, we have to enter the password of the user that we created during the installation and click on the button or press enter.
If the password is correct, the session loading screen should appear, as shown in the following image. Be careful, it is not the most beautiful, but that is where the advantage of KDE is, we can change it like all the previous ones.
Once the system fully loads, it shows a desktop like the following, in which we can see elements very similar to a Microsoft Windows desktop. This even includes a secondary menu like the one shown below
By displaying the main menu we can see the following options
In the preferences window we can make all the adjustments we want both in the appearance and behavior of the system. For example, in the following image the appearance option is selected and we can see some global themes installed by default. We could also obtain new global themes, this option will require our team to be connected to the internet.
6. Configure repositories and update Debian 12
After the first login, review the APT repositories and install all security and package updates. Open Konsole from the application menu, or launch KRunner with Alt+Space and type konsole. There is no need to run a full graphical text editor as root just to edit APT configuration.
If you configured a root password during installation, use su - to obtain an administrative shell. If you left root disabled, use sudo from your regular account. For a workstation, the latter avoids keeping a complete root session open longer than necessary.
The original screenshots use Kate to edit /etc/apt/sources.list as root. That still works technically, but a safer and simpler approach is apt edit-sources, sudoedit /etc/apt/sources.list, or a terminal editor such as nano. Back up the file before replacing it if you have already added custom repositories.
For a Bookworm system connected to the Internet, use the official Debian repositories shown below. The non-free-firmware component is important on Debian 12 for firmware outside main. Enable contrib and non-free only when you need software from those sections. bookworm-backports is optional and is not required for a normal installation.
Software source configuration lines (Repositories)
#======================================================#
# Repositorios Oficiales Internet Debian 12 (Bookworm) #
#======================================================#
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb https://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmwareIf it was saved correctly and the Kate window was closed, we return to the console and write
Save the changes and run apt update —or sudo apt update when using sudo. APT will refresh the package indexes and report malformed entries or repository-signature errors.
Then run apt full-upgrade —or sudo apt full-upgrade— and review the proposed package changes before confirming. For a user-facing guide I prefer not to append -y, because reviewing removals and replacements is safer than accepting them automatically.
The update can take a while depending on the number of pending packages and network speed. If a new kernel is installed, reboot so the system starts with it. Because Debian 12 is now in LTS, it is also useful to install debian-security-support and periodically run check-support-status to identify installed packages whose security support is limited or has ended.
Conclusions
You now have a clean Debian 12 Bookworm + KDE Plasma workstation and a basic repository configuration. We kept all 37 original screenshots because they remain useful for following the Bookworm installer. For a brand-new machine in 2026, use Debian 13 unless you specifically need Debian 12; if you remain on Bookworm, keep the security repositories enabled and remember that LTS support ends on June 30, 2028.
Sources and references
Debian 12 “Bookworm” — official release information
Official Debian 12 installation guide
Debian LTS — using Bookworm and its repositories
