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Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

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Wheelerof4te
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#21 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Just tried it again to make sure. Indeed, you must tick DDE AND DE you want, otherwise the installation fails. Sorry for the misinfo.

brian_p
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#22 Post by brian_p »

Wheelerof4te wrote:Just tried it again to make sure. Indeed, you must tick DDE AND DE you want, otherwise the installation fails. Sorry for the misinfo.
*You* didn't provide any misleading information until now. It is sufficient to tick the wanted DE to get it. Ticking DDE is not necessary, but will not do any harm. That worked for me when putting cinnamon on a machine. 'apt-cache show task-cinnamon-desktop' has

Code: Select all

Depends: tasksel (= 3.31+deb8u1), task-desktop, cinnamon-desktop-environment
so DDE not being installed would be a bug.

The guess that DDE installs TWM is incorrect but vaguely amusing.
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runfrodorun
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#23 Post by runfrodorun »

Seems like what would make sense is to change the functionality so if you tick a desktop, it ticks DDE, and if you untick DDE, it unticks all desktops. But... too lazy

-RJ
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No systemd.
Wow.

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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#24 Post by brian_p »

runfrodorun wrote:Seems like what would make sense is to change the functionality so if you tick a desktop, it ticks DDE, and if you untick DDE, it unticks all desktops. But... too lazy
What would a user see when the tasksel screen first presents itself?
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dvp1964
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Joined: 2015-02-17 14:29

Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#25 Post by dvp1964 »

So it seems no one REALLY knows. This is ridiculous.

I am an XFCE user

I once DID install it and ended up wtih some gnome stuff added in.
Pissed me off.

Fresh installed it again this time with ONLY XFCE checked and it was fine.

Debian Desktop Environment does NOT mean X window system or any other.
NOT installing it but only XFCE I ended up with a fully function XFCE desktop.

I can not believe we can not get an answer from someone on the Debian team who actually knows.
Is it just a left-ver option from years past? Perhaps so.

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Ardouos
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#26 Post by Ardouos »

This has been looked into before I think:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=128850
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Thorny
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#27 Post by Thorny »

dvp1964 wrote:So it seems no one REALLY knows. This is ridiculous.
To me seems a little bit ridiculous to dredge up a thread that hasn't been posted to since early November 2015.

You could answer your questions about the packages by running apt-cache show for the packages and examining and comparing the depends and recommends for them as below. Notice that task-desktop (Description: Debian desktop environment) is a depends of task-xfce-desktop.
thorny@Atlas:~$ apt-cache show task-desktop
Package: task-desktop
Source: tasksel
Version: 3.31+deb8u1
Installed-Size: 21
Maintainer: Debian Install System Team <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: all
Depends: tasksel (= 3.31+deb8u1), xorg, xserver-xorg-video-all, xserver-xorg-input-all, desktop-base
Recommends: task-gnome-desktop | task-xfce-desktop | task-kde-desktop | task-lxde-desktop | task-cinnamon-desktop | task-mate-desktop, xdg-utils, avahi-daemon, libnss-mdns, anacron, eject, iw, alsa-utils, alsa-base
Description: Debian desktop environment
Description-md5: 17cb4a1ed6025b48045cc576bf52317c
Section: tasks
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/t/tasksel/task-desktop_3.31+deb8u1_all.deb
Size: 954
MD5sum: 83e61e8758c18a39f8e69fd98d749113
SHA1: c2fc5ac8452249c693c153c511adf5331ca3ae55
SHA256: c48967767c5da4c386081daabdf0c4f5e2cb2cafa1197f0c5ed1798b29751f4f

thorny@Atlas:~$ apt-cache show task-xfce-desktop
Package: task-xfce-desktop
Source: tasksel
Version: 3.31+deb8u1
Installed-Size: 21
Maintainer: Debian Install System Team <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: all
Depends: tasksel (= 3.31+deb8u1), task-desktop, xfce4, lightdm
Recommends: xfce4-goodies, xfce4-power-manager, xfce4-mixer, xfce4-terminal, mousepad, orage, libreoffice-gtk, dbus-x11, xsane, vlc, quodlibet, evince-gtk | evince, tango-icon-theme, network-manager-gnome, synaptic, iceweasel, libreoffice, libreoffice-help-en-us, mythes-en-us, hunspell-en-us, hyphen-en-us, system-config-printer, gnome-orca
Description: Xfce
Description-md5: 08a9ff56c8a18b2ac196e81f91682cf1
Section: tasks
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/t/tasksel/task-xfce-desktop_3.31+deb8u1_all.deb
Size: 1094
MD5sum: 86f5864a30ad1d42917a98cf86e387b2
SHA1: d8fdbf80db6736543178ea2410956544a37f6b44
SHA256: 0b29a14de5a212bf25c200c9aadf598cc147b8927c7974bc94f18c2d1f659511

dvp1964 wrote:I can not believe we can not get an answer from someone on the Debian team who actually knows.
Is it just a left-ver option from years past? Perhaps so.
Well, I don't know that anyone on the "Debian team" ever reads posts here. I'm not even sure I know what you mean by Debian team. If you think something should be changed in the installer tasksel you could file a bug to try and get developer attention.

jasonz
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#28 Post by jasonz »

I just came across it myself. Yeah, this is really unfortunate, it's really arbitrary. Installing Stretch rather than Jessie, but it's still the same issue.

I see a list of:

- Debian desktop environment
- ... GNOME
- --- KDE
- ... Cinnamon
- ... MATE
- ... LXDE
- web server
- print server
- SSH server
- standard system utilities

First of all, the top of the list is somehow related to all the window managers starting with "..." - but it's not really clear, at all, what it means to select Debian desktop environment. It is impossible to discern. Actually, it appears that it's equivalent to ticking GNOME from reading other comments in this thread, but who really knows.

Secondly, "web server". I mean, really. Is that Apache, or NGINX or something else? If you want a web server, I'm sure you know how to use apt - why is this an option at this stage of the install? It's not as though you can interact with your installed web server in any meaningful way without first writing some code, perhaps in a terminal window.

Lastly, why would standard system utilities be an option (or optional?) What are standard system utilities, in any case? That could mean anything.

From a UX perspective, this is very dated.

These are my first impressions on installing Debian.

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None1975
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Re: Installing Jessie - what is Debian Desktop Environment?

#29 Post by None1975 »

jasonz wrote:Secondly, "web server". I mean, really. Is that Apache, or NGINX or something else?
Please read documentation.
By default, debian-installer installs the Gnome desktop environment. It is possible to interactively select a different desktop environment during the installation. It is also possible to install multiple desktops, but some combinations of desktop may not be co-installable. The various server tasks will install software roughly as follows. Web server: apache2; Print server: cups; SSH server: openssh. The “Standard system” task will install any package that has a priority “standard”. This includes a lot of common utilities that are normally available on any Linux or Unix system. You should leave this task selected unless you know what you are doing and want a really minimal system.
OS: Debian 12.4 Bookworm / DE: Enlightenment
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