Re: Is "Debian desktop environment" identical to "GNOME" upon installation?

[Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)]

Hi,

I did some test by installing 2 identical virtualbox instances (EFI
turned on) with the same netinst image <debian-11.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso>.

I typically use XFCE, so I wanted to test if leaving "Debian desktop
environment" marked would affect or not my XFCE installation.

It does.

a)
| [ ] Debian desktop environment
| [*] XFCE

b)
| [*] Debian desktop environment
| [*] XFCE

Using (b), I end up with 12 more installed packages. I checked that
there weren't any available upgrades after installing both (apt-get
update && apt-get upgrade showed 0).

The offending list is:

hv3
libsqlite3-tcl
libtcl8.6
libtk-img
libtk8.6
tcl
tcl-tls
tcl8.6
tcllib
tk
tk-html3
tk8.6

Maybe there's a bug somewhere in tasksel?

I did some tests running tasksel again after the installation, and were
intriguing, but I'll hold the deeper tests for after this is inspected.

Cheers,

Alex


--
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/

[Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)]

Hi,

I added a few CCs, and added below a quote that I should have added to
the original mail.

Sorry, I forgot to quote the previous mail:



> I think the goal of the menu design was to accommodate
> a first time user who has no experiential background
> to chose a specific desktop. If you chose
> "Debian desktop environment" AND a specific desktop,
> the specific choice overrides.

So I proved that this is not what is happening.

[Greg Wooledge]

> Is "Debian desktop environment" identical to "GNOME" upon installation?

Assuming you install with one of the REGULAR installers (not one that
contains the word "Live" anywhere in its name): yes.

Selecting "Debian desktop environment" in the installer simply acts
as an alias for whichever desktop environment task happens to be the
default for that installer.

Right now, for the regular official installers (and also for the
unofficial installer with non-free firmware), that default task happens
to be GNOME.

With the "Live" installers, the default is different.

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2021, 7:21 AM Greg Wooledge <gr...@wooledge.org> wrote:

> Is "Debian desktop environment" identical to "GNOME" upon installation?

....

Right now, for the regular official installers (and also for the
unofficial installer with non-free firmware), that default task happens
to be GNOME.

With the "Live" installers, the default is different.

And if I may ask: Why is it different? If there is a reason or two.

[Brian]

Bearing in mind that a bullseye installation of mine does not have a
DE but does have xorg, the commands

apt install task-desktop task-xfce-desktop
apt install task-xfce-desktop

tell me that 759 packages are needed in both cases. None of the packages
you cite are mentioned in either list or already present on the sytem..

--
Brian.

[Tixy]

Guessing here... because a live version already has a desktop
environment on the disk, so it make sense to default to installing that
one. E.g. if you choose, say, the XFCE live iso, it would default to
XFCE not Gnome. Would be a bit perverse otherwise.

--
Tixy

[Peter Ehlert]

I consider it Faulty Design.

there is no "Debian desktop environment"... from my superficial testing
it is kinda "Gnome Lite"
(and in My Opinion gnome desktop is rather hateful).

Being selected by default is a Huge design flaw.

a simple "select a desktop environment" text message with something like
"without a desktop you only get a terminal" as a suggestion for the
uninformed would be far superior.

BTW: I only use net-install because I don't want all that cruft.

PS: hunting down all swap partitions on very drive and setting them to
Format by default is also a real pain in the tush.

[Brian]

I rather thought the Live images contained a copy of d-i but am not
going to download an ISO to refresh my menory. I will offer

https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/customizing-installer.en.html

I'd see it as a bit unusual for this copy to differ from the regular d-i.

--
Brian.

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 12:50:23PM +0100, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
>hv3

This is a web browser written in TCL/tK. What I suspect is happening is
it's being pulled in to satisfy a dependency on "www-browser" virtual
package by one of the desktop metapackages.

>libsqlite3-tcl
>libtcl8.6
>libtk-img
>libtk8.6
>tcl
>tcl-tls
>tcl8.6
>tcllib
>tk
>tk-html3
>tk8.6

These are all dependencies from hv3.

--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jm...@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net

[Brian]

On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 16:28:36 +0000, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 12:50:23PM +0100, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> > hv3
>
> This is a web browser written in TCL/tK. What I suspect is happening is
> it's being pulled in to satisfy a dependency on "www-browser" virtual
> package by one of the desktop metapackages.

Interesting that hv3 hasn't any Reverse Depends: and that 'apt install
task-desktop task-xfce-desktop' does not propose it for installation'.

--
Brian.

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

A few things:

1. GNOME is only the default on AMD64 / i386 - on some of the ARM variants,
it's still XFCE, I think.

2. XFCE _was_ the default for a one CD install until Buster - it's now
too big for one CD so there is no longer a CD which will install as
single desktop by default.

3. The live CDs are designed so that you download the one with the desktop
you want. The "standard" one installs a minimum Debian with standard packages
and no gui.

4. Live CD install is not guaranteed to be the same as the traditional
Debian installer. Calamares is very significantly different. Live CD/DVD is
maintained by a different libe CD team and not by the Debian media team.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater



> --
> Brian.
>

[Brian]

I forgot firefox-esr is installed. This satisfies the www-browser
package dependency. Hence

apt install task-desktop task-xfce-desktop
apt install task-xfce-desktop

show the same number of packages to be installed.

Purging the browser gives the twelve package differnece obtianed by
Alejandro Colomar.

Now it gets more interesting. task-xfce-desktop depends on task-desktop
and the later recommends firefox | firefox-esr. The first command above
proposes to install firefox-esr. Why propose hv3 too?

--
Brian.

[David Wright]

On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 07:43:22 (-0700), Peter Ehlert wrote:
> On 11/5/21 4:50 AM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> >
> > I did some test by installing 2 identical virtualbox instances
> > (EFI turned on) with the same netinst image
> > <debian-11.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso>.
> >
> > I typically use XFCE, so I wanted to test if leaving "Debian
> > desktop environment" marked would affect or not my XFCE
> > installation.
> >
> > It does.
> >
> > a)
> > | [ ]  Debian desktop environment
> > | [*]    XFCE
> >
> > b)
> > | [*]  Debian desktop environment
> > | [*]    XFCE
> >
> > Using (b), I end up with 12 more installed packages.  I checked
> > that there weren't any available upgrades after installing both
> > (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade showed 0).
> >
> > The offending list is:
> >
> > hv3

[ and its dependencies ]

> >
> > Maybe there's a bug somewhere in tasksel?
>
> I consider it Faulty Design.
>
> there is no "Debian desktop environment"... from my superficial
> testing it is kinda "Gnome Lite"
> (and in My Opinion gnome desktop is rather hateful).
>
> Being selected by default is a Huge design flaw.
>
> a simple "select a desktop environment" text message with something
> like "without a desktop you only get a terminal" as a suggestion for
> the uninformed would be far superior.

This particular horse was flogged a year ago. Top of thread:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/09/msg00238.html

It's not something I take great interest in as I don't use a DE.

> BTW: I only use net-install because I don't want all that cruft.

I wasn't aware that the netinst d-i distinguished itself by not
installing "cruft". AIUI, whether you install a DE depends on your
replies on this screen:

│ Choose software to install: │
│ │
│ [*] Debian desktop environment │
│ [*] ... GNOME │
│ [ ] ... Xfce │
│ [ ] ... GNOME Flashback │
│ [ ] ... KDE Plasma │
│ [ ] ... Cinnamon │
│ [ ] ... MATE │
│ [ ] ... LXDE │
│ [ ] ... LXQt │
│ [ ] web server │
│ [ ] SSH server │
│ [*] standard system utilities │

I've installed non-DE and non-DE, non-X systems from DVDs in the past,
and one DE installation from a netinst.

> PS: hunting down all swap partitions on very drive and setting them to
> Format by default is also a real pain in the tush.

I've no idea what is meant by this, nor its relevance to the Subject.
I'd mention in passing that I installed bullseye on a 512MB laptop
without configuring any swap space, as always. I leave that until the
system is up and running.

Cheers,
David.

[Brian]

On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 17:02:01 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 04:04:17PM +0000, Brian wrote:
> > On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 13:43:29 +0000, Tixy wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, 2021-11-05 at 07:47 -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 5, 2021, 7:21 AM Greg Wooledge <gr...@wooledge.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > > Is "Debian desktop environment" identical to "GNOME" upon installation?
> > > > >
> > > > > ....
> > > > >
> > > > > Right now, for the regular official installers (and also for the
> > > > > unofficial installer with non-free firmware), that default task happens
> > > > > to be GNOME.
> > > > >
> > > > > With the "Live" installers, the default is different.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > And if I may ask: Why is it different? If there is a reason or two.
> > >
> > > Guessing here... because a live version already has a desktop
> > > environment on the disk, so it make sense to default to installing that
> > > one. E.g. if you choose, say, the XFCE live iso, it would default to
> > > XFCE not Gnome. Would be a bit perverse otherwise.
> >
> > I rather thought the Live images contained a copy of d-i but am not
> > going to download an ISO to refresh my menory. I will offer
> >
> > https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/customizing-installer.en.html
> >
> > I'd see it as a bit unusual for this copy to differ from the regular d-i.
> >
>
> A few things:
>
> 1. GNOME is only the default on AMD64 / i386 - on some of the ARM variants,
> it's still XFCE, I think.

Fine, but this is not, IMHO, the OP's concern. He is using amd64/i386.
Nevertheless, it is something to be aware of.

> 2. XFCE _was_ the default for a one CD install until Buster - it's now
> too big for one CD so there is no longer a CD which will install as
> single desktop by default.

Correct, but I do not think we are into CD vs DVD in the OP's issue.
This is something to discard from our thinking.

> 3. The live CDs are designed so that you download the one with the desktop
> you want. The "standard" one installs a minimum Debian with standard packages
> and no gui.

OK, but the relevance to the OP's issue is obscure. Does it need to
taken into account for the issue raised?

> 4. Live CD install is not guaranteed to be the same as the traditional
> Debian installer. Calamares is very significantly different. Live CD/DVD is
> maintained by a different libe CD team and not by the Debian media team.

Ah! Calamares. It alters the way tasksel behaves in d-i? Heaven help us!
Is that is what is meant when it is claimed by Greg Wooledg:

With the "Live" installers, the default is different"?

Calamares introduces a new ball game?

Alejandro Colomar's observations are quite clear and reprducible. It
would be expected he would be along later to expand on them.

--
Brian.

[Linux-Fan]

Brian writes:

> On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 17:02:01 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 04:04:17PM +0000, Brian wrote:
> > > On Fri 05 Nov 2021 at 13:43:29 +0000, Tixy wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Fri, 2021-11-05 at 07:47 -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Nov 5, 2021, 7:21 AM Greg Wooledge <gr...@wooledge.org> wrote:

[...]

> > > > > > With the "Live" installers, the default is different.
> > > > >
> > > > > And if I may ask: Why is it different? If there is a reason or two.
> > > >
> > > > Guessing here... because a live version already has a desktop
> > > > environment on the disk, so it make sense to default to installing that
> > > > one. E.g. if you choose, say, the XFCE live iso, it would default to
> > > > XFCE not Gnome. Would be a bit perverse otherwise.

AFAICT it does not only "default" to the DE contained within the live system
but rather does not even show the choice screen because it installs by
copying/extracting the live system's data and hence, the DE (and other
software choices) are already set. See below.

> > > I rather thought the Live images contained a copy of d-i but am not
> > > going to download an ISO to refresh my menory. I will offer
> > >
> > > https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-
> > > manual/customizing-installer.en.html
> > >
> > > I'd see it as a bit unusual for this copy to differ from the regular d-i.

> > A few things:

[...]

> > 3. The live CDs are designed so that you download the one with the desktop
> > you want. The "standard" one installs a minimum Debian with standard
> > packages and no gui.
>
> OK, but the relevance to the OP's issue is obscure. Does it need to
> taken into account for the issue raised?

TL;DR: Live Installers do not present the DE selection screen hence it
should not relate to the OP.

> > 4. Live CD install is not guaranteed to be the same as the traditional
> > Debian installer. Calamares is very significantly different. Live CD/DVD is
> > maintained by a different libe CD team and not by the Debian media team.
>
> Ah! Calamares. It alters the way tasksel behaves in d-i? Heaven help us!
> Is that is what is meant when it is claimed by Greg Wooledg:
>
> With the "Live" installers, the default is different"?
>
> Calamares introduces a new ball game?

[...]

Let me try to clarify this a little bit from my experience as an "advanced"
user :)

Calamares is an entirely separate installer that can be invoked from within
a running (live) system. It is _one_ way to install Debian from a live
system but it is not the only one. It is worth stressing that there is _no_
interaction between Calamares and d-i and that they prsent different
screens. Behind the scenes, Calamares invokes an `rsync` to copy the data
from within the live system to the target.

For a typical session in Calamares, see [1] for an example from Debian Buster.

Now d-i is separate in that it does not run from within the live system but
has to be invoked _instead_ of the respective live system from the boot
menu. It is, however, contained on the same ISO image/DVD together with the
live system's data. The d-i variant used on live systems does not ask for
the choice of DE because its software selection cannot be customized like in
the regular d-i. Instead, it simply copies the data from the live file
system to the targed drive (? I am not exactly sure on this one ?). See [2]
for an example from Debian Buster and note the absence of the tasksel
screen.

Now the regular d-i shows the tasksel screen and asks for which DE to
install. See [3] for an example from the Debian Bullseye Alpha 3 installer.

Here are some "real screenshots" :)

[1] https://masysma.lima-city.de/37/debian_i386_installation_reports_att/m2-dl1080-i386-lxde-calamares.xhtml

[2] https://masysma.lima-city.de/37/debian_i386_installation_reports_att/m2-dl1080-i386-lxde-di.xhtml

[3] https://masysma.lima-city.de/37/debian_i386_installation_reports_att/m6-d11a3-i386-netinst.xhtml

HTH
Linux-Fan

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