Debian Minimal Installation

[mardybear]

The only thing i recall reading about your hardware is:

Sorry for not mentioning, but my hardware is most modern. So GNOME3 isn't a problem in regards to resources consumption.

Not specific but fair enough...you find it adequate, although you also plan to use the system for development. I've only done light compiling, but anything heavy can be hard on resources and a lighter desktop environment may then be appreciated. That's all i was trying to get at. If you have more than enough horsepower then it won't matter.

The best, full-featured and customizable - can't say. If i had to choose a desktop environment today it would probably be Mate, Xfce or LXDE, but my needs are different so to me an Openbox setup with an lxpanel or tint panel plus an informative conky is beautiful and flexible. If you're looking at it from a Gnome3 perspective, then you will probably disagree.

Everyone's opinion of very minimal is different. For myself a minimal install is Tiny Core Linux with JWM - an ~20MB footprint including base file system, kernel and window manager - can't beat that for a minimal base. To me Gnome3 and minimal don't jive. Also depends on your definition of minimal. Minimal installation footprint - not Gnome3. Minimal RAM usage - not Gnome3. Minimal processor load for 3D graphics and effects - not Gnome3. But that's the beauty of Linux...lots of choices as long as you're happy.

[geekosupremo]

Just my two cents, I've found Xfce to be light, powerful, and pretty easy to make look the way I like.

I'm also mostly doing web dev so not so demanding on the compiler side.

[oui]

Hi

For different reasons (mainly the use of an completely different PC) I did have a great interruption (long time) of use of my minimal installation of sid and did remake it completely yesterday.

All is ok, the system works well in all details excepted...

...it does not allow to work in graphic mode (using xorg!) as user (as root all works and is permitted!).

As it is not recommanded at all especially to surf on the web as root, the consequence is that the system ist not usable at all as my major occupation is to accede to the web and use it ...

To solve it, I did del the user created for me, del it's group, remove it's home, restart and recreate it under a completely new user name to avoid to re-use old wrong settings. same result ...

It seems to be needed now to register each user somewhere to permit to entry into some high level functions

alternative

the actual new setting procedure for user in Sid does not work out all steps as in the past...

A idea what can be tried to do to make the user able to entry and use the graphic mode without to acquire the superuser rights for that (as, after that, he continue to be root in all graphic mode operations or, if you "degrade" it in a terminal with "su - user", it can not invoque graphic functions with CLI commands entered in the terminal?

Kind regards