Linux 'Comfy Chair'

You know how it is; your own Linux is set up like your favourite comfy chair - everything is close to hand, set up the way you want, and there are no surprises. That's why it's so annoying to set up a new computer or virtual machine, especially if you are testing stuff (like this script!!) that needs both a certain amount of installed dependencies and a dependable state.

Hence this script. This is the evolution of my previous work to bootstrap a new Raspberry PI system and Windows 10 'WSL', but for pure (Debian Based) Linux. Primary usage and testing has been done with Ubuntu though it should now work with any Debian-based distribution. Note that the script will only run on debian-based distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Kali, Mint etc etc) as well as Raspberry PI or WSL variants on those.

Note that the script is geared towards and tested on server versions more than Desktop ones, though it has been used successfully on both. In fact my primary day-to-day machine runs Ubuntu Desktop (22.04) which was set up using this script.

Compatible Linux systems

This script has been tested on the following systems:

• Ubuntu Desktop and Server 64-bit, 20.x and up.
• Debian Bullseye 64-bit minimal network install (so it should work fine on the full GUI install)
• Raspberry PI 3 Arm64 running Ubuntu 22.04
• Raspberry PI 4 Arm64 running Raspbian Bullseye
• WSL2 on Windows 10 & 11, running Ubuntu or Debian images.

If you have experience (good or bad) running this script on other hardware, cpu and Debian-based OS's please get in touch and I will add to the list, or fix the problem 😁

Prerequisites

At the absolute minimum, you need a working system that you can log into, either locally or over ssh. The only 2 other absolute requirements are that git and sudo are installed. In 99% of cases, they will be. Some minimal images may not have these - for example, the standard Docker Ubuntu image does NOT, nor does a minimal (non-GUI, network install) installation of Debian Bullseye. The script will install any other missing base dependencies that are critical for the rest of the script to function.

Note: WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

This system has also been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 running under WSL2 and works perfectly as far as I can see with the below caveats:

• The Docker Script is DISABLED. If you wish to use Docker under WSL then please install the 'Docker Desktop' under windows itself. This already is very well and tightly integrated with WSL. Just ensure that you have Docker Desktop running in the background. As a side effect, your Docker containers in Windows will now run using the WSL so will be proper linux containers.
• Due to the lack of background services, you will need to manually start Postgresql, Nginx, ssh etc as required. I use a script in my home dir so I can enable and disable at will when needed.
• This may work under WSL version 1, and has worked in the past, however I no longer test against this version of WSL. In all cases it is worthwhile and very easy to upgrade to WSL Version 2

If WSL is detected, the package ubuntu-wsl will also be installed if missing. This should already be there in the official Ubuntu image, but probably not custom ones

I have moved away from using WSL, as I have migrated to Linux full-time for my development and day-to-day machine, however, I will try to test on WSL and fix any errors for each official release.

Note 2: Currently only for bash and zsh shells

The installer uses Bash and expects Bash to be present on the system, which is the default on Debian-based distributions. It detects the login shell from $SHELL and writes configuration to .bashrc or .zshrc. Other login shells are not currently supported.

As a result, under shells other than Bash or Zsh the Pyenv/Rbenv/NVM etc will not work at this time, though you can certainly move the relevant sections from .bashrc or .zshrc to the correct file for your shell.

General Information

The script works on a bare newly installed system and provides the following functionality :

• Updated to the latest package versions from Ubuntu / Debian upstream.
• Have the build-essential package installed plus all required support libraries to enable the below functionality to work.
• The Latest version of Git installed. A skeleton .gitconfig will be set up with a few aliases.
• The Ruby scripting language is installed via Rbenv with the current Rails version and several other common gems.
• Node.js both the most recent LTS version and latest stable version via NVM. The LTS version is activated by default.
• The Python scripting language, latest 3.x version via Pyenv. uv, Poetry and PipX are all pre-installed.
• The latest version of Rust via rustup.
• Install the latest STABLE Perl scripting language via Perlbrew with cpan and cpanm pre-installed and configured. Several PERL modules that make cpan easier are also pre-installed
• Enable resolution of WINS hostnames
• [DISABLED BY DEFAULT] Install the latest Nginx web server, PHP 8.5 FPM, CLI, common PHP extensions, and PostgreSQL 18.
• Install Docker and Docker-compose (unless on WSL2)
• Some useful command-line tools are installed automatically, including zoxide, fzf, lazygit, lazydocker, bat, ripgrep, fd, and direnv.

You can enable or disable each module by commenting out the relevant section in the comfy-chair.sh script.

Security

Please be aware that no attempt has been made to Secure or harden the final Linux system. This is something you will need to do yourself. Indeed, if your server is public, I'd advise that a very restrictive firewall blocking everything IN except for SSH is the first thing you do before even running this script! No responsibility will be taken for security breaches on systems set up with this script.

Current Issues/Bugs

• Shell startup configuration is currently generated for Bash and Zsh only. Other shells need manual setup.

Usage

The simplest way to use this script is to clone into a completely new clean Operating System.

From the terminal run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/seapagan/linux-comfy-chair.git
cd linux-comfy-chair
./comfy-chair.sh

Local Docker test shell

For local testing without modifying your host system, you can start an ephemeral Ubuntu 24.04 container:

./docker-shell.sh

To record the full container terminal session to logs/, run:

./docker-shell.sh --log

The helper builds a local test image, starts a fresh container, mounts this repository at ~/comfy-chair, and asks whether to log in with Bash or Zsh. The container user is created with your host UID and GID, so the bind-mounted working tree remains writable. The container is removed when you exit, so installed packages and system changes do not persist.

When ./comfy-chair.sh runs inside ANY container, it skips the Docker install module to avoid trying to install Docker inside Docker.

Obviously, you need to have Docker installed already on your local machine.

Default branch has been renamed

In line with many Open-Source projects, I have renamed the Default branch from master to main. If you have already cloned or forked this repository, please run the following commands in your local copies :

git branch -m master main
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/main main
git remote set-head origin -a

Optionally, also remove any tracking references to the old branch name :

git remote prune origin

Development checks

Run the shell syntax and ShellCheck validation with:

./scripts/check-shell.sh

This requires shellcheck; on Ubuntu, install it with:

sudo apt install shellcheck

The check validates the main bootstrapper and follows its sourced modules in context.

To-Do

• More robust fall-over on already configured systems. If Rbenv etc are already installed then ignore installing that part
• set up configuration keys to determine what modules to install

Further proposed modules

• Vagrant
• Samba

Contributing

Please do feel free to open an Issue for any errors or missing dependencies you find, or even a Pull Request with solutions 😎

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request