No, Debian is not going to use "Xfce by default". There is a ongoing discussion on debian-devel about what to put on CD1 (for people who install with CDs and no

No, Debian is not going to use "Xfce by default". There is a ongoing discussion on debian-devel about what to put on CD1 (for people who install with CDs and no network), as Gnome and KDE do not fit anymore. Putting Xfce by default solves this issue, so does using xz compression for .debs. But no consensus has been reached : this has been committed in git, but no package has been released yet. And as others have said, defaults are mostly irrelevant (or most people would use Vim in Vi-compatible mode). Debian is a software distribution, which is only a way to deliver software to your computer. You can install whatever DE or WM you wish :)