20 ms·

Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop

184 points by zeis 14y ago

esolyt 14y ago
I'm glad XFCE is finally getting the attention it deserves. It is clean, simple, usable, and well-designed. Gnome 3, while arguably having better design, has awful usability.
- powerslave12r 14y ago
  Call me paranoid, but I'm scared it's also getting the attention it probably shouldn't.
  - toni 14y ago
    6 years ago, you could simply install xfc4-panel - or any other XFCE package - individually without too much fanfare. It would happily install and run no matter what WM you were using. These days, trying to install xfce4-panel individually is impossible as it will force you to install an army of "additional" packages, some even originating from GNOME. XFCE is not the same "lightweight" desktop environment it once was. That task is now handed over to LXDE.
    - kijin 14y ago
      In the meantime, GNOME and KDE have moved on to something else: shiny, full of animations, and resource-hungry. I think it's only natural that some other desktop environment has moved to fill the void where GNOME 2 and KDE 3 used to be. LXDE now fills the place where XFCE used to be. Sooner or later, something else will fill the space where LXDE used to be, etc, etc, and life goes on!
    - esolyt 14y ago
      What exactly do you mean by "originating from GNOME"? http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/xfce4-panel/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/xfce4-panel/ I can't find anything GNOME-related here, unless you are talking about GTK (which you probably would already have on your system if you want the xfce-panel).
  - simula67 14y ago
    I agree. I switched to Debian + XFCE a couple of years ago and really like the small incremental changes approach and focus on stability rather than 'Lets redefine the desktop' attitude taken by other desktop environments. It works for me. I have "mastered" the windows concept and now I just want to use my computer to get stuff done, not learn a new UI concept every other day (unless it involves substantial improvements to my experience).
- syassami 14y ago
  Don't forget easily customizable, xfce is really nice on the eyes after some slight modification.
stcredzero 14y ago
This makes sense to me, since >I< now default to XFce. (Been using XUbuntu as my Vbox image for awhile.)
sanxiyn 14y ago
Since all desktop environments in Debian are maintained with equal commitments and you can install any of them easily, change of "default" desktop environment is a rather symbolic gesture. Technically, the reason for the change is that GNOME won't fit in a CD without a diet and Xfce will. I am not sure how many people install Debian with CD (not DVD, not USB, not network install, etc.) though...
- derefr 14y ago
  One point would be that if you're setting up rackmount server hardware, it still tends to come with a CD drive rather than DVD. That's one of Debian's primary purposes nowadays, given that Ubuntu has eaten most of its desktop market-share away.
  - btgeekboy 14y ago
    From whom? Dell doesn't, to my knowledge, offer any CD drives. It's DVD or nothing; we usually choose the latter due to iDRAC's virtual CD/DVD capabilities anyway.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    I haven't seen a rackmount server with a CD drive for many years.
  - andyking 14y ago
    The last few rack-mounted servers we bought came with DVD writers, which seemed a little redundant to me. In our case, we only ever use the DVD drive once, to install CentOS, and then it's closed up and never used again. I can't imagine any situation where you'd want to write a DVD using a server...
    - djeikyb 14y ago
      I've talked to many an admin writing their backups to dvd. Not the way I'd do it, but..
HillOBeans 14y ago
Sounds cool to me, since I have migrated to xfce as my DE of choice anyway...
skbohra123 14y ago
There's a fork of Gnome 2 http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/ works very well.
aw3c2 14y ago
Direct non-phoronix link http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=2a962cc65cdba010177f27e8824ba10d9a799a08 http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=co...
figital 14y ago
very nice i've been hoping for this for a long time ... and will be giving this consideration when my current crunchbang desktop needs a reinstall: http://figital.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/xubuntu_with_a_.html http://figital.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/xubuntu_with_a_.html (hoping to see more javascript hooks now in the XFCE widgets)
T_S_ 14y ago
Are you a dev? Try awesome. Invest two hours of confusion and RTFM and you may never go back.
- dysoco 14y ago
  Or DWM, or Xmonad, or i3, or Spectrwm, or StumpWM... You don't even need to be a dev, just want to learn!
  - T_S_ 14y ago
    Second that. All tiling window mangers. Much more efficient.
    - dkersten 14y ago
      All tiling window mangers I used to think that until I started using goomwwm, which, while looking and feeling like a tiling window manager, is technically a stacking window manager.
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        Could you explain? From the screenshots I see, it doesn't seem that different from behavior enabled by wmii, xmonad, etc (even if the defaults vary).
        dkersten 14y ago
        goomwwm is a mouse-centric stacking window manager. That means that new windows are opened above others, you can move them around and the focused window will stack above any windows it overlaps and you can resize them to arbitrary sizes, uses a alt-tab (mod-tab and mod-grave really) window switcher to toggle between open windows (tab between all windows, grave between windows of the current tag only) and lets you minimize windows - just like you'd expect from a traditional stacking window manager. You can move/resize with the mouse, but there are keyboard controls to move and resize windows. It is these keyboard controls that make it feel like a manual-tiling window manager because it is very easy to position windows in a tiled manner and there are some conrols that really help with this: mod-d will resize the focused window to be the exact same size as the window directly below it mod-f makes a window fullscreen mod-v resizes all windows stacked underneath the focused window so that they are tiled vertically (occupying the same space as they did before) mod-h is the same for horizontal tiling movement is aligned to a 3x3 grid the grow and shrink resize the window by an amount that makes tiling on the grid easier (there is also a more fine-grained grow/shrink that doesn't align to the grid) mod-shift-movement will swap the focused window and the closest window in the direction of movement - this swaps both windows sizes and their positions mod-home sets the window height to the height of the screen mod-end sets the window width to the width of the screen mod-shift-movement2 "snaps" the focused window to the edge of the closest window in the direction of movement2 mod-return will grow the window to fill all available space without overlapping other windows mod-backspace will shrink a window to fill all available space without overlappinp other windows By default, mod is mod4 (the windows key), but can be set to anything you like. movement being the keys to move windows, by defualt the cursor keys. movement2 being the keys to select/focus windows, by defualt i, j, k and l. On top of this, you can set rules which basically allow you to run certain commands on specified windows/applications automaticlaly and rulesets which are sets of rules which you can trigger through a keyboard command. A ruleset you can find on the goomwwm website is to automatically tile windows like you would in a dynamic tiling window manager like awesomewm (eg a main area and a side area), you can then use the "swap" commands to swap the windows in the main area with the other windows as needed. This makes goomwwm feel very much like a manual tiling window manager, yet it still has solid support for stacking and, in fact, always stacks windows by defualt. This makes it more flexible than it would otherwise be without giving up any tiling or keyboard-centric goodness. Of course, being a border-less, title-bar-less super minimal window manager makes it also look like a tiling window manager, which are traditionally just as minimal. I'm sure I didn't explain that very well, so I'd suggest giving it a try in Xephyr or Xnest or something. Its easy to get running (git clone ...; make; ./goomwwm -- takes about 2 seconds to compile on my laptop) and only depends on the usual xlib related libs and dmenu. Or, if you don't feel like trying it out, you should at least glance at the tutorial: http://aerosuidae.net/goomwwm/tutorial http://aerosuidae.net/goomwwm/tutorial
Kerrick 14y ago
Wouldn't the Wheezy feature freeze a few weeks back mean that this wouldn't apply in Stable until Debian Jesse, not Wheezy?
raverbashing 14y ago
Call me old fashioned, but I would really like some "old new distro" Put modern packages, but not "new" packages . No pulseaudio, packagekit, networkmanager. You don't need to worry about automounting usb for example Get me the latest version of KDE 3 That would be very fast in any modern machine
- darkstalker 14y ago
  Try Gentoo or Arch, you can build them whatever you like
  - nucleardog 14y ago
    Or, y'know, any *nix. Just do a minimal/base install and build up from there.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Arch has a very good user community. It's worth search the Arch forums even if you're not using Arch. They should be commended for their approach to clear documentation. Some other minimal distributions include: Linux From Scratch: TinyCore: Took over where DSL left off, with better philosophy. Slitaz: good internationalisation, runs entirely from ram. TomsRtBt: the most Linux on a single floppy Puppy: Weird and non standard but oddly popular DSL: Also very popular among a certain group, was dead for years but is just recently getting a new release Obviously some of these are scarily odd: single user, everyone has root, etc etc.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Honestly, most of these are necessary evils these days. New sound cards are cheaper than old ones, and don't support software mixing. Hence Pulseaudio. (Not to mention things like Bluetooth headsets, which don't appear as ALSA devices and instead are natively supported by Pulseaudio.) NetworkManager is similar -- editing wpa_supplicant configurations is a nightmare. It works from the command-line now, so it's not like it's imposing anything on you anymore.
  - 14y ago
patrickmclaren 14y ago
Coupled with the eventual shift to Wayland, a default install of Debian should be a lot slimmer and internally less chaotic.
kzrdude 14y ago
It can still change before release.
film42 14y ago
I feel like gnome and kde is the majority of linux dev community putting all there eggs in one basket. And that's great, but there's also no "board of directors" who will say, "your product sucks." I mean, I grew up and still love gnome2, but I feel now things are starting to change after opinions rage with gnome3. I consider my self in the market for a new window manager and I think I'm gonna have to go with awesome.
fleitz 14y ago
This is what I love about linux on the desktop, on one thread we've got serious complaints about usability, on another thread we're switching window managers because it won't fit on a CD. A CD? In 2012? Windows and OS X haven't fit on a CD in almost 10 years and you can barely find a copy of OS X on DVD. Yet the primary concern on linux is not usability but whether it fits on an install CD. I think there might be higher priority concerns than whether a user is able to install a modern operating system on the Pentium MMX & 8X CD drive they found in the dumpster.
- powerslave12r 14y ago
  Your point is understandable, but distribution restricted to the size of a CD is a major feature. It fits right in with the linux way of supporting really old hardware. It's not about the newest and shiniest hardware. Debian is known to be a slow moving but very stable distribution. Support for older hardware (without DVD Reader/Writers) might have been a big point of consideration.
  - fleitz 14y ago
    People like you and me will have no problem creating a custom install CD that defaults to XFCE to run on our really old hardware. Normal people will download a debian CD and get XFCE and think that's linux on the desktop. What I don't understand is why linux always optimizes for the corner case of a couple ultra cheap geeks who can't stand the idea of upgrading their 300 mhz celeron.
    - powerslave12r 14y ago
      Valid point about the option of a slim xfce-based install being available. I disagree about the 'normal people' point. 'Normal people' are less likely to download Debian as opposed to Mint or Ubuntu. If they venture into Debian territory, they're looking for something more and know what they're doing. Which leads me to your third point, that is, I would venture a guess that the number of people who would care about this might not be in the minority after all. (Disclaimer: I have made assumptions about the numbers, if someone has nice numbers to refute/support this argument, please do the honors.) Also, 'ultra cheap geeks' are usually puppets controlled by the management.
noonespecial 14y ago
I just rediscovered XFCE myself after the brutal letdown that was KDE "plasma" 4.x. I still load on the full KDE groupinstall so I can run KDE apps, but I use XFCE as the desktop. I had fogotten just how "snappy" a desktop could be.
- lifeguard 14y ago
  For me it was Unity. XFCE is exactly what I wanted.
  - D9u 14y ago
    I'm another netbook user on a slow connection, and I've never cared for GNOME (since Breezy Badger), for various reasons, so when I found out about Xfce I was quite pleased with it. I like that some distros provide different "spins" as Fedora does, although switching DE is a simple task, why download stuff you don't want?
- graue 14y ago
  Absolutely. I've been on Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE) for several years, but I tried out stock Ubuntu on my netbook a few months ago — just to see the Unity desktop firsthand. This is a cheapo Dell netbook from 2009, 1024x600 resolution. Unity was so slow as to be completely unusable, and it took up precious screen real estate with a launcher bar I could not remove. It basically turned that netbook into a brick. Now that I'm back to XFCE, with the panel set to auto-hide, I can hack with that laptop again, no problem. I don't think you ought to need the latest and greatest machine just to run a responsive OS. XFCE is simple, fast, and gives you what you need with no unwelcome surprises.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    I run 12.04 on a similar netbook but I don't feel Unity particularly slow. Of course, the Atom processor in it isn't designed to be fast, but it's usable. And the launcher can be turned off.
    - 14y ago
jrockway 14y ago
That's good. The new GNOME doesn't work very well with Xmonad anymore, so I switched to XFCE. How much code does one need to display a list of my windows at the top of the screen along with some tray applets anyway.
- AncientPC 14y ago
  How so? I'm running Xmonad with GNOME 3.4 right now.
DebianSqueeze 14y ago
This is because they could not fit Gnome on the disc. It was about 40 megs too big. I saw the memo the other day.
sergiotapia 14y ago
Is this even lighter than Cinnamon? I've been using Cinnamon with Mint 13 for weeks now and I love that OS. If it weren't for my Hitman games, I wouldn't even boot to Windows at all these days.
devb0x 14y ago
I was weary of xfce, it appeared to need a couple of gnome libs for some things, but man oh man, do i love it now. I have to have it everywhere.
demetris 14y ago
Looking at tasksel’s changelog on a Sid installation, I see the last change was v3.12 from 21 July 2012 and I cannot find anything about changing the default desktop environment for the desktop task. So, maybe this change is not meant for the frozen Wheezy, whose taskel is already behind Sid’s (v3.11 compared to Sid’s v3.12). Maybe someone familiar with Debian’s decision-making and development processes could enligthen us.
nvmc 14y ago
About time. Gnome has been suffering from 'feature' creep for years. As of late it has gone from merely unpleasant, to barely usable.
TheGateKeeper 14y ago
I still use a self-customized BlackboxWM for my graphical mode needs. It's great on debian. =]
hk_kh 14y ago
Good move, why not? If I recall correctly, Debian is all about keeping things fast, stable and usually chosen as a good fit for a server. In any case, most users that expect a "fully blown with bells and whistles" WM would use Ubuntu. I'm still loving using fluxbox in my old laptop.
wting 14y ago
The information is incorrect according to Jeremy Bicha: > Yet another poorly researched news item from Phoronix. Debian hasn't actually switched the Wheezy default desktop to XFCE. GNOME is the default today and could still be the default for release. > It was changed in the git but it wasn't actually released yet. Several GNOME packages have already been rebuilt with xz compression to make the binaries small enough to fit on the CD. > Switching the default desktop would be controversial and there's a lot of inertia behind GNOME. https://plus.google.com/110356875332222535709/posts/46wiyitnqpJ https://plus.google.com/110356875332222535709/posts/46wiyitn...

184 points by zeis 14y ago

I'm glad XFCE is finally getting the attention it deserves. It is clean, simple, usable, and well-designed. Gnome 3, while arguably having better design, has awful usability.

powerslave12r 14y ago
Call me paranoid, but I'm scared it's also getting the attention it probably shouldn't.
- toni 14y ago
  6 years ago, you could simply install xfc4-panel - or any other XFCE package - individually without too much fanfare. It would happily install and run no matter what WM you were using. These days, trying to install xfce4-panel individually is impossible as it will force you to install an army of "additional" packages, some even originating from GNOME. XFCE is not the same "lightweight" desktop environment it once was. That task is now handed over to LXDE.
  - kijin 14y ago
    In the meantime, GNOME and KDE have moved on to something else: shiny, full of animations, and resource-hungry. I think it's only natural that some other desktop environment has moved to fill the void where GNOME 2 and KDE 3 used to be. LXDE now fills the place where XFCE used to be. Sooner or later, something else will fill the space where LXDE used to be, etc, etc, and life goes on!
  - esolyt 14y ago
    What exactly do you mean by "originating from GNOME"? http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/xfce4-panel/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/xfce4-panel/ I can't find anything GNOME-related here, unless you are talking about GTK (which you probably would already have on your system if you want the xfce-panel).
- simula67 14y ago
  I agree. I switched to Debian + XFCE a couple of years ago and really like the small incremental changes approach and focus on stability rather than 'Lets redefine the desktop' attitude taken by other desktop environments. It works for me. I have "mastered" the windows concept and now I just want to use my computer to get stuff done, not learn a new UI concept every other day (unless it involves substantial improvements to my experience).
syassami 14y ago
Don't forget easily customizable, xfce is really nice on the eyes after some slight modification.

stcredzero 14y ago

This makes sense to me, since >I< now default to XFce. (Been using XUbuntu as my Vbox image for awhile.)

sanxiyn 14y ago

Since all desktop environments in Debian are maintained with equal commitments and you can install any of them easily, change of "default" desktop environment is a rather symbolic gesture. Technically, the reason for the change is that GNOME won't fit in a CD without a diet and Xfce will. I am not sure how many people install Debian with CD (not DVD, not USB, not network install, etc.) though...

derefr 14y ago
One point would be that if you're setting up rackmount server hardware, it still tends to come with a CD drive rather than DVD. That's one of Debian's primary purposes nowadays, given that Ubuntu has eaten most of its desktop market-share away.
- btgeekboy 14y ago
  From whom? Dell doesn't, to my knowledge, offer any CD drives. It's DVD or nothing; we usually choose the latter due to iDRAC's virtual CD/DVD capabilities anyway.
- vidarh 14y ago
  I haven't seen a rackmount server with a CD drive for many years.
- andyking 14y ago
  The last few rack-mounted servers we bought came with DVD writers, which seemed a little redundant to me. In our case, we only ever use the DVD drive once, to install CentOS, and then it's closed up and never used again. I can't imagine any situation where you'd want to write a DVD using a server...
  - djeikyb 14y ago
    I've talked to many an admin writing their backups to dvd. Not the way I'd do it, but..

HillOBeans 14y ago

Sounds cool to me, since I have migrated to xfce as my DE of choice anyway...

skbohra123 14y ago

There's a fork of Gnome 2 http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/ works very well.

aw3c2 14y ago

Direct non-phoronix link http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=2a962cc65cdba010177f27e8824ba10d9a799a08 http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=co...

figital 14y ago

very nice i've been hoping for this for a long time ... and will be giving this consideration when my current crunchbang desktop needs a reinstall: http://figital.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/xubuntu_with_a_.html http://figital.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/xubuntu_with_a_.html (hoping to see more javascript hooks now in the XFCE widgets)

T_S_ 14y ago

Are you a dev? Try awesome. Invest two hours of confusion and RTFM and you may never go back.

dysoco 14y ago
Or DWM, or Xmonad, or i3, or Spectrwm, or StumpWM... You don't even need to be a dev, just want to learn!
- T_S_ 14y ago
  Second that. All tiling window mangers. Much more efficient.
  - dkersten 14y ago
    All tiling window mangers I used to think that until I started using goomwwm, which, while looking and feeling like a tiling window manager, is technically a stacking window manager.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      Could you explain? From the screenshots I see, it doesn't seem that different from behavior enabled by wmii, xmonad, etc (even if the defaults vary).
      - dkersten 14y ago
        goomwwm is a mouse-centric stacking window manager. That means that new windows are opened above others, you can move them around and the focused window will stack above any windows it overlaps and you can resize them to arbitrary sizes, uses a alt-tab (mod-tab and mod-grave really) window switcher to toggle between open windows (tab between all windows, grave between windows of the current tag only) and lets you minimize windows - just like you'd expect from a traditional stacking window manager. You can move/resize with the mouse, but there are keyboard controls to move and resize windows. It is these keyboard controls that make it feel like a manual-tiling window manager because it is very easy to position windows in a tiled manner and there are some conrols that really help with this: mod-d will resize the focused window to be the exact same size as the window directly below it mod-f makes a window fullscreen mod-v resizes all windows stacked underneath the focused window so that they are tiled vertically (occupying the same space as they did before) mod-h is the same for horizontal tiling movement is aligned to a 3x3 grid the grow and shrink resize the window by an amount that makes tiling on the grid easier (there is also a more fine-grained grow/shrink that doesn't align to the grid) mod-shift-movement will swap the focused window and the closest window in the direction of movement - this swaps both windows sizes and their positions mod-home sets the window height to the height of the screen mod-end sets the window width to the width of the screen mod-shift-movement2 "snaps" the focused window to the edge of the closest window in the direction of movement2 mod-return will grow the window to fill all available space without overlapping other windows mod-backspace will shrink a window to fill all available space without overlappinp other windows By default, mod is mod4 (the windows key), but can be set to anything you like. movement being the keys to move windows, by defualt the cursor keys. movement2 being the keys to select/focus windows, by defualt i, j, k and l. On top of this, you can set rules which basically allow you to run certain commands on specified windows/applications automaticlaly and rulesets which are sets of rules which you can trigger through a keyboard command. A ruleset you can find on the goomwwm website is to automatically tile windows like you would in a dynamic tiling window manager like awesomewm (eg a main area and a side area), you can then use the "swap" commands to swap the windows in the main area with the other windows as needed. This makes goomwwm feel very much like a manual tiling window manager, yet it still has solid support for stacking and, in fact, always stacks windows by defualt. This makes it more flexible than it would otherwise be without giving up any tiling or keyboard-centric goodness. Of course, being a border-less, title-bar-less super minimal window manager makes it also look like a tiling window manager, which are traditionally just as minimal. I'm sure I didn't explain that very well, so I'd suggest giving it a try in Xephyr or Xnest or something. Its easy to get running (git clone ...; make; ./goomwwm -- takes about 2 seconds to compile on my laptop) and only depends on the usual xlib related libs and dmenu. Or, if you don't feel like trying it out, you should at least glance at the tutorial: http://aerosuidae.net/goomwwm/tutorial http://aerosuidae.net/goomwwm/tutorial

Kerrick 14y ago

Wouldn't the Wheezy feature freeze a few weeks back mean that this wouldn't apply in Stable until Debian Jesse, not Wheezy?

raverbashing 14y ago

Call me old fashioned, but I would really like some "old new distro" Put modern packages, but not "new" packages . No pulseaudio, packagekit, networkmanager. You don't need to worry about automounting usb for example Get me the latest version of KDE 3 That would be very fast in any modern machine

darkstalker 14y ago
Try Gentoo or Arch, you can build them whatever you like
- nucleardog 14y ago
  Or, y'know, any *nix. Just do a minimal/base install and build up from there.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Arch has a very good user community. It's worth search the Arch forums even if you're not using Arch. They should be commended for their approach to clear documentation. Some other minimal distributions include: Linux From Scratch: TinyCore: Took over where DSL left off, with better philosophy. Slitaz: good internationalisation, runs entirely from ram. TomsRtBt: the most Linux on a single floppy Puppy: Weird and non standard but oddly popular DSL: Also very popular among a certain group, was dead for years but is just recently getting a new release Obviously some of these are scarily odd: single user, everyone has root, etc etc.
jrockway 14y ago
Honestly, most of these are necessary evils these days. New sound cards are cheaper than old ones, and don't support software mixing. Hence Pulseaudio. (Not to mention things like Bluetooth headsets, which don't appear as ALSA devices and instead are natively supported by Pulseaudio.) NetworkManager is similar -- editing wpa_supplicant configurations is a nightmare. It works from the command-line now, so it's not like it's imposing anything on you anymore.
- 14y ago

patrickmclaren 14y ago

Coupled with the eventual shift to Wayland, a default install of Debian should be a lot slimmer and internally less chaotic.

kzrdude 14y ago

It can still change before release.

film42 14y ago

I feel like gnome and kde is the majority of linux dev community putting all there eggs in one basket. And that's great, but there's also no "board of directors" who will say, "your product sucks." I mean, I grew up and still love gnome2, but I feel now things are starting to change after opinions rage with gnome3. I consider my self in the market for a new window manager and I think I'm gonna have to go with awesome.

fleitz 14y ago

This is what I love about linux on the desktop, on one thread we've got serious complaints about usability, on another thread we're switching window managers because it won't fit on a CD. A CD? In 2012? Windows and OS X haven't fit on a CD in almost 10 years and you can barely find a copy of OS X on DVD. Yet the primary concern on linux is not usability but whether it fits on an install CD. I think there might be higher priority concerns than whether a user is able to install a modern operating system on the Pentium MMX & 8X CD drive they found in the dumpster.

powerslave12r 14y ago
Your point is understandable, but distribution restricted to the size of a CD is a major feature. It fits right in with the linux way of supporting really old hardware. It's not about the newest and shiniest hardware. Debian is known to be a slow moving but very stable distribution. Support for older hardware (without DVD Reader/Writers) might have been a big point of consideration.
- fleitz 14y ago
  People like you and me will have no problem creating a custom install CD that defaults to XFCE to run on our really old hardware. Normal people will download a debian CD and get XFCE and think that's linux on the desktop. What I don't understand is why linux always optimizes for the corner case of a couple ultra cheap geeks who can't stand the idea of upgrading their 300 mhz celeron.
  - powerslave12r 14y ago
    Valid point about the option of a slim xfce-based install being available. I disagree about the 'normal people' point. 'Normal people' are less likely to download Debian as opposed to Mint or Ubuntu. If they venture into Debian territory, they're looking for something more and know what they're doing. Which leads me to your third point, that is, I would venture a guess that the number of people who would care about this might not be in the minority after all. (Disclaimer: I have made assumptions about the numbers, if someone has nice numbers to refute/support this argument, please do the honors.) Also, 'ultra cheap geeks' are usually puppets controlled by the management.

noonespecial 14y ago

I just rediscovered XFCE myself after the brutal letdown that was KDE "plasma" 4.x. I still load on the full KDE groupinstall so I can run KDE apps, but I use XFCE as the desktop. I had fogotten just how "snappy" a desktop could be.

lifeguard 14y ago
For me it was Unity. XFCE is exactly what I wanted.
- D9u 14y ago
  I'm another netbook user on a slow connection, and I've never cared for GNOME (since Breezy Badger), for various reasons, so when I found out about Xfce I was quite pleased with it. I like that some distros provide different "spins" as Fedora does, although switching DE is a simple task, why download stuff you don't want?
graue 14y ago
Absolutely. I've been on Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE) for several years, but I tried out stock Ubuntu on my netbook a few months ago — just to see the Unity desktop firsthand. This is a cheapo Dell netbook from 2009, 1024x600 resolution. Unity was so slow as to be completely unusable, and it took up precious screen real estate with a launcher bar I could not remove. It basically turned that netbook into a brick. Now that I'm back to XFCE, with the panel set to auto-hide, I can hack with that laptop again, no problem. I don't think you ought to need the latest and greatest machine just to run a responsive OS. XFCE is simple, fast, and gives you what you need with no unwelcome surprises.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  I run 12.04 on a similar netbook but I don't feel Unity particularly slow. Of course, the Atom processor in it isn't designed to be fast, but it's usable. And the launcher can be turned off.
  - 14y ago

jrockway 14y ago

That's good. The new GNOME doesn't work very well with Xmonad anymore, so I switched to XFCE. How much code does one need to display a list of my windows at the top of the screen along with some tray applets anyway.

AncientPC 14y ago
How so? I'm running Xmonad with GNOME 3.4 right now.

DebianSqueeze 14y ago

This is because they could not fit Gnome on the disc. It was about 40 megs too big. I saw the memo the other day.

sergiotapia 14y ago

Is this even lighter than Cinnamon? I've been using Cinnamon with Mint 13 for weeks now and I love that OS. If it weren't for my Hitman games, I wouldn't even boot to Windows at all these days.

devb0x 14y ago

I was weary of xfce, it appeared to need a couple of gnome libs for some things, but man oh man, do i love it now. I have to have it everywhere.

demetris 14y ago

Looking at tasksel’s changelog on a Sid installation, I see the last change was v3.12 from 21 July 2012 and I cannot find anything about changing the default desktop environment for the desktop task. So, maybe this change is not meant for the frozen Wheezy, whose taskel is already behind Sid’s (v3.11 compared to Sid’s v3.12). Maybe someone familiar with Debian’s decision-making and development processes could enligthen us.

nvmc 14y ago

About time. Gnome has been suffering from 'feature' creep for years. As of late it has gone from merely unpleasant, to barely usable.

TheGateKeeper 14y ago

I still use a self-customized BlackboxWM for my graphical mode needs. It's great on debian. =]

hk_kh 14y ago

Good move, why not? If I recall correctly, Debian is all about keeping things fast, stable and usually chosen as a good fit for a server. In any case, most users that expect a "fully blown with bells and whistles" WM would use Ubuntu. I'm still loving using fluxbox in my old laptop.

wting 14y ago

The information is incorrect according to Jeremy Bicha: > Yet another poorly researched news item from Phoronix. Debian hasn't actually switched the Wheezy default desktop to XFCE. GNOME is the default today and could still be the default for release. > It was changed in the git but it wasn't actually released yet. Several GNOME packages have already been rebuilt with xz compression to make the binaries small enough to fit on the CD. > Switching the default desktop would be controversial and there's a lot of inertia behind GNOME. https://plus.google.com/110356875332222535709/posts/46wiyitnqpJ https://plus.google.com/110356875332222535709/posts/46wiyitn...