I have had to do it one or two years ago for my previous installation, but that’s because I was using Debian on a computer whose WiFi card does not have open source drivers. But in Ubuntu it worked out of the box, and I think it may work out of the box on Debian too now that they include non free firmware by default.

You only need to install special drivers manually if you use a distro that is a bit “advanced”.

If you just want to record your path, with your speed and altitude, you could also use your map application, if it supports it. For example OSMAnd has a “Trip recording” plugin.

Yeah, really, I only know awk '{ print $SOME_COLUMN_NUMBER }', nothing else.