Debian Desktop Environment in Installer

debian gnome xfce desktop-environment debian-installer

27,385

Solution 1

If no specific desktop environment is selected, but the “Debian desktop environment” is, the default which ends up installed is determined by tasksel: on i386 and amd64, it’s GNOME, on other architectures, it’s XFCE.

Solution 2

The Debian-desktop-environment option appears to add distro branding (additional info in details-of-packages linked below); also, as mentioned, GNOME is installed by default -- unless another DE is selected.

Package: desktop-base (9.0.2+deb9u1) common files for the Debian Desktop

This package contains various miscellaneous files which are used by Debian Desktop installations. Currently, it provides some Debian-related artwork and themes, .desktop files containing links to Debian related material (suitable for placement on a user's desktop), and other common files between the available desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE.

Package: task-desktop (3.39) Debian desktop environment

This task package is used to install the Debian desktop.

27,385

mas

One thing consistently amazes me about the utility of Unix: the primacy of text. Also: ...the hacker understands why Unix is the way it is, and agrees that it wouldn't be the same any other way. It is this sort of acculturation that gives Unix hackers their confidence in the system and the attitude of calm, unshakable, annoying superiority captured in the Dilbert cartoon. Windows 95 and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic. What made old epics like Gilgamesh so powerful and so long-lived was that they were living bodies of narrative that many people knew by heart, and told over and over again--making their own personal embellishments whenever it struck their fancy. The bad embellishments were shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved and, over time, incorporated into the story. Likewise, Unix is known, loved, and understood by so many hackers that it can be re-created from scratch whenever someone needs it. This is very difficult to understand for people who are accustomed to thinking of OSes as things that absolutely have to be created by a company and bought. Many hackers have launched more or less successful reimplementations of the Unix ideal. Each one brings in new embellishments. Some of them die out quickly, some are merged with similar, parallel innovations created by different hackers attacking the same problem, other still are embraced and adopted into the epic. Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics. —Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning...was the Command Line

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

mas over 1 year
I have researched the heck out of this question and found two pages about the issue but not clarifying it.

In the debian-installer during the optional software selection phase you have these options:
```
Debian desktop environment (already ticked by default)
    ... GNOME (not ticked)
    ... xfce (not ticked)
    ... KDE (not ticked)
    ... Cinnamon (not ticked)
    ... MATE (not ticked)
    ... LXDE (not ticked)
```
What does Debian desktop environment actually install? Does it install a GUI (Gnome, my understanding, is the default) or does it just install a handful of programs useful for desktop users but which do not include a GUI? Do you have to tick off Gnome to get the GUI or not? And if not, what is the purpose of the option to tick off Gnome in addition to Debian Desktop Environment?

The page concerning Desktop Environments in the Debian Wiki does not clarify the issue.

This thread on the Debian User Forums concerns this very issue but has a raft of contradictory answers.
- Kusalananda almost 6 years
  
  I believe, based to the answer to this question that GNOME will be installed by default.
- mas almost 6 years
  
  You mean if you leave GNOME unchecked gnome will still be installed?
mas about 5 years

Stephen, would you mind expanding on this in one specific way: what happens if you select either "GNOME" or "XFCE" but don't select "Debian desktop environment". I.e., what's the difference between the tasksel route and the DDE route other than the fact that DDE picks for you? Is bentt correct that the DDE contains Debian branding, where the other options are vanilla?
Stephen Kitt about 5 years

There’s no difference, you end up with the same selection of packages, including Debian branding.