Re: Debian 13 Trixie GUI desktop environments
On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 10:41:42AM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> * On 2025 14 Sep 09:07 -0500, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
> > GNOME appears to be the default desktop environment for many Linux distros.
>
> A lot of the reason for that is historical. A lot of distributions have
> another DE as the default, i.e. that which is installed when the user
> doesn't make an explicit choice, in the case of Debian, or nothing else
> is offered. Debian gives you the chance to try nearly all of these
> environments without having to install yet another distribution.
>
If one is seeking a mostly integrated experience here, then using tasks
(I see them in aptitude, but I'm fairly certain that other package
management front ends expose them as well) is the way to go. They act as
meta packages which pull in collections of packages that contribute
towards an integrated experience.
There are many many tasks, including those which are focused on a
particular desktop environment (e.g., task-xfce-desktop), those which
focus on a particular human language (e.g., task-catalan), and those
which focus on a particular desktop environment in a particular human
language (e.g., task-swedish-kde-desktop).
I point this out because on various occasions I have seen users get
frustrated by the bewildering array of choices, which can make it
difficult to figure out which particular packages need to be installed
to make everything work together in a nice way.
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sánchez
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