Re: LEAN Debian install: Exploring task selection menu
On Thu 10 Sep 2020 at 19:34:24 (+0200), Marco Möller wrote:
> On 10.09.20 18:43, David Wright wrote:
> > On Thu 10 Sep 2020 at 08:24:41 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > On 09/10/2020 02:28 AM, Marco Möller wrote:
[…]
> > > > You should remind, that if in the tasksel menu deselecting all
> > > > specifically named Desktop Environments (Gnome, Xfce, KDE, ...)
> > > > but still selecting the top entry "Debian desktop environment"
> > > > then a full blown Gnome environment will be downloaded and
> > > > installed.
> > >
> > > I discovered that long ago. I consider that a bug, but the Debian team
> > > likely considers that a feature.
> >
> > So what would your version of an installer do when presented with:
> >
> > │ [*] Debian desktop environment │
> > │ [ ] ... GNOME │
> > │ [ ] ... Xfce │
> > │ [ ] ... KDE │
> > │ [ ] ... Cinnamon │
> > │ [ ] ... MATE │
> > │ [ ] ... LXDE │
>
> I agree with Richard's criticism and would suggest to not present that
> first line "Debian desktop environment" at all, because it is
> redundant with the second line "... GNOME". If someone deselects the
> second line because no wanting GNOME, but does not imag[in]e what the
> first line might contain, then he will be surprised that GNOME became
> anyway fully installed after the first line was still selected, a
> behaviour which makes no sense after the second line was explicitly
> not selected.
OTOH it makes a lot of sense to a user, new to linux, who knows they
want to try KDE as their desktop, say, because they've read about it
somewhere. If they click on KDE, that's what they get. Were the d-i
to have already selected GNOME when this person clicked on KDE, they
would get both.
Or, if you treat the list like a ballot, the d-i keeps the default up
its sleeve (for it has to install *some* DE), but it doesn't try to
influence the user's choice unfairly.
You can argue this any way you like. Hardly a "bug".
> It is especially annoying if you did this selection
> "mistake" on slow or expensive bandwidth. When I first time did this
> mistake, I thought, hey, maybe for a desktop they will install already
> something like network manager and other network managing tools or a
> tiny collection of enhanced editors like vim instead of vi only, maybe
> some other cute utilities.
Eh?
> But I ended up with looong time downloading
> and installing a full blown GNOME which I actually wanted to avoid
If you're *that* concerned, try reading the Installation Guide first:
NOTE
The “Desktop environment” task will install a graphical desktop environment.
By default, debian-installer installs the Gnome desktop environment. It is
possible to interactively select a different desktop environment during the instal-
lation. It is also possible to install multiple desktops, but some combinations of
desktop may not be co-installable.
> and
> therefore did unselect the second line initially.
Are you saying that the second line (GNOME) was selected by default?
(Note that my two screen shots are taken from different point
releases: the (snipped) tasksel output was copied just today,
whereas the screen extract quoted above is 10 months old, being
from the 10.2 d-i.)
Cheers,
David.
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