On Sun 28 Jun 2020 at 08:21:29 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
The default install of the MATE desktop installs too much I don't want.
Unfortunately the Debian installer does not allow coerces the
installation of "recommended" packages.
Therefore I did an install without *ANY* desktop environment.
[Used DVD1 of Debian 8.6, latest for which I had a physical DVD]
I then did
apt-get --no-install-recommends install mate-desktop-environment gparted
On reboot the desktop did not appear.
What is the forgotten command to automatically launch the desktop at boot?
You appear to want to install MATE manually without Recommends, rather
than within the d-i and with Recommends. In that case, you should
install task-mate-desktop, not just mate-desktop-environment: