
Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop - zeis
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1NTk
======
fleitz
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
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
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.

~~~
cdavid
Linux is used a lot in countries where buying the last and greatest is not an
option, nor is fast internet connection.

~~~
shanemhansen
My understanding was that even in those cases, most people just pirate windows
xp. I am not even close to a windows lover, but have you seen the system
requirements for windows xp? <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865>

Basically a 233MGhz processor and 64mb of ram will get you a usable windows xp
installation.

~~~
vacri
"usable"? No. Those specs are simply wrong.

But even then, you're showing incredible hubris by saying "screw those guys,
let them pirate XP". Debian's strength is that it tries to be universal -
platforms and languages.

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sanxiyn
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
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.

~~~
andyking
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
I've talked to many an admin writing their backups to dvd. Not the way I'd do
it, but..

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esolyt
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
Call me paranoid, but I'm scared it's also getting the attention it probably
shouldn't.

~~~
toni
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
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!

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noonespecial
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.

~~~
graue
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
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.

~~~
graue
You might have a different definition of "completely unusable" from mine, but
have you ever compared XFCE and Unity on the same machine? I'm accustomed to a
snappy DE. I don't expect to wait 30 seconds+ for the most basic desktop to
show up on boot, and when I drag windows I expect them to move instantly with
no visible lag. Unity didn't meet those expectations on my Mini 10v. XFCE does
easily.

~~~
rbanffy
Yes. I'm running xfce right now, but I really don't see much of a difference
apart from the lack of glitz. Memory seems to be a little bit lower, but not
that much.

Another option for the memory constrained is Unity2D (and hiding the launcher
for the pixel-constrained). It uses screen real estate a little bit more
efficiently than xfce and looks nicer.

~~~
graue
Weird, I might have to try it again sometime. I definitely remember thinking
Unity's performance was horrible, but some of that may be confirmation bias (I
expected going in that XFCE would be lighter than other options). And I was
unaware the launcher could be hidden.

~~~
deafbybeheading
I'll second that. The first release with Unity (11.04?) was dradful. The
second fixed some major issues, and now it's perfectly usable (unless you're
particularly set in your ways). I run 12.04 on an older Eee, and it's not
noticeably faster or slower than when I was running Xubuntu before.

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raverbashing
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

~~~
jrockway
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.

~~~
kmm
Hasn't software mixing been in ALSA for ages, with the dmix plugin? I don't
think Pulseaudio is necessary for everything.

I do see the Networkmanager is a necessary evil, but why does it have to be so
awful? It's great if it works, but if it doesn't then solving the problem is
extremely hard because of the bloated, uncommunicative nature of the program.

~~~
jrockway
Pulseaudio can abstract over multiple devices, allowing you to mute individual
applications, move streams between physical pieces of hardware, and so on.
Audio mixing in kernel-space is brittle and the wrong place for the code
anyway. Doing it in userspace is more secure, more flexible, and generally a
good design.

~~~
kmm
In theory, maybe. In practice, Pulseaudio is just horrible and gave me
troubles I have never experienced with ALSA. I'm personally convinced it's one
of the biggest mistakes made in the Linux world.

However, if we're going to put the sound server in userspace, which isn't a
bad idea, the kernel side should be broken down. This would be an excellent
time to deprecate ALSA!

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

~~~
dysoco
Or DWM, or Xmonad, or i3, or Spectrwm, or StumpWM... You don't even need to be
a dev, just want to learn!

~~~
patrickmclaren
Find a comparison of all the tiling window managers here --
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Wi...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers)

The Arch community is great for support with these types of WMs.

~~~
shurane
Heck, the Arch community is great with regards to getting software (including
the latest branches) up and running on a machine. Definitely a helpful
community with admirable goals.

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aw3c2
Direct non-phoronix link
[http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=co...](http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=2a962cc65cdba010177f27e8824ba10d9a799a08)

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wting
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/46wiyitn...](https://plus.google.com/110356875332222535709/posts/46wiyitnqpJ)

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devb0x
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.

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jrockway
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
How so? I'm running Xmonad with GNOME 3.4 right now.

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

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sergiotapia
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.

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demetris
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.

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

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skbohra123
There's a fork of Gnome 2 <http://mate-desktop.org/> works very well.

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

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figital
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> (hoping to see
more javascript hooks now in the XFCE widgets)

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

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

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DebianSqueeze
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.

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

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kzrdude
It can still change before release.

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hk_kh
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.

