If you're installing Debian and using preseeding to automate things, there are a lot of settings that you can change directly during the installation phase. Most of the useful things you might want to change are those for the installer itself (e.g. choice of disk partition layout, keyboard, language etc.). However, it is also possible to configure things up in a lot of other packages too if you know the appropriate runes. Finding out exactly what settings are possible can take quite a lot of effort.

Here is some help with that. I've written a script to extract all of the debconf templates in the Debian archive for each of the following releases, pulling out all the places where a template reflects a question or choice. Not all of these settings will make sense out of context, and some of them may not be sensible to use in a preseed. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! But I'm hoping this comprehensive listing might be useful for some people regardless.

I've only generated the set for amd64; other arches should be almost identical.

pipx is a tool to help you install and run end-user applications written in Python. It's roughly similar to macOS's brew, JavaScript's npx, Linux's apt, and Ruby's rvm.

It's closely related to pip. In fact, it uses pip, but is focused on installing and managing Python packages that can be run from the command line directly as applications.

pip is a general-purpose package installer for both libraries and apps with no environment isolation. pipx is made specifically for application installation, as it adds isolation yet still makes the apps available in your shell: pipx creates an isolated environment for each application and its associated packages.

By default, pipx uses the same package index as pip, PyPI. pipx can also install from all other sources pip can, such as a local directory, wheel, git url, etc.

Just what it says on the tin. Assumes a Digital Ocean droplet and you have root access.

Some people have had a hell of a time installing Composer on a shared DH account, well here's how I did it. I'm going to assume you know what a shell user is and how to use basic terminal.

How to install vim from the FreeBSD ports collection without it installing most of X along with it.

cd /usr/ports/editors/vim
make WITHOUT_X11=yes install clean

A non-interactive system for automating the installation of Debian (and derivative) systems, sort of like Redhat's Kickstart or Solaris' Jumpstart. Used for unattended mass deployment (machine cloning). Centralizes deployment and configuration management. Can also be used to build out virtual machines. Can even set up LVM and RAID on new machines!