devsetup1-1  Exercise 1: A Hardware and Installation Plan for devserver
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There is no single correct plan, because the details depend on your actual
machine. This is a worked example showing the level of detail to aim for. Fill
in the bracketed values from your own measurements.

DEVSERVER PLAN
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1. Graphics card fit
   - Slot: measure the free height above the PCIe slot [__ mm] and the space
     to the drive bays or front panel [__ mm].
   - Card: check the card's height (full-height or low-profile bracket),
     length [__ mm] and cooler thickness (is it a single- or dual-slot card?).
   - Power: does the card need extra power connectors, and does the machine's
     power supply have them and enough spare capacity? Note the PSU rating
     [__ W] and the card's recommended supply.
   - Decision: fits / needs a low-profile bracket / does not fit. If it does
     not fit, the machine runs on the integrated graphics and Chapter 4 is
     skipped for now.

2. Storage
   - Drive: [__ GB], SSD or spinning disk? [__]
   - Anything on it worth keeping? [yes/no]. If yes, copied to [__] first.

3. Firmware
   - UEFI or legacy BIOS? [UEFI]
   - Secure Boot: [on/off]. Left on, unless a driver problem later forces a
     change (see Chapter 4).
   - BIOS password or management software installed by work? [__]

4. Work-ownership question
   - Asked IT whether the machine may be wiped and reinstalled, and whether
     disk encryption is required by policy. Answer: [__]

5. Desktop
   - GNOME (the Debian default). Reason: well tested on Debian, needs no
     extra setup, and 64 GB of RAM means its weight is irrelevant.
     (KDE Plasma or Xfce would also be reasonable choices.)

6. Partition table (assuming a 500 GB SSD)
   - EFI System Partition   1 GB     FAT32   (created by the installer)
   - /                      80 GB    ext4
   - swap                   16 GB
   - /home                  ~403 GB  ext4
   Encryption: [yes/no], decided after the work-ownership answer.

7. Other installer choices
   - Hostname: devserver, domain left blank.
   - Root password left empty; first user gets sudo.
   - Software selection: GNOME, standard system utilities, SSH server.
     No web server.
   - Network: wired connection during install.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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Every risky assumption (does the card fit, is there anything to lose, may the
machine be wiped) is checked before the installer runs, because those are the
problems that are cheap to find now and expensive to find halfway through.
Recording the partition table and installer choices also gives you the raw
material for the provisioning script in Chapter 10.