I have been a Debian user for more than 10 years now and, like many
others, Linux/alternative OS enthusiasts have tried, retried many other OSes and always return to my Debian home. Below is my experience of setting up a minimalistic desktop environment for productivity and ease of use.
Disclaimer: I’m assuming the following bits about the reader, i.e. you’re good at or at least comfortable using the command line to than a GUI and you want a workable desktop but not necessarily a Windows/Mac OSX replacement.
Debian folks do a great job of providing an installer that can be configured to install just the right desktop you want. If you prefer to use it, then there are two steps to it. First, tell the installer that you want an alternative desktop.
Debian’s default desktop environment is GNOME. Second, you have to select to install the “Desktop environment” during the installation process, which is usually after the base OS installation.
If you were like me, then you would like to know everything that goes into your system, and hence prefer an approach different from the above, or in other words, installing just the required packages. One benefit is that, say down the line, I change my mind and want to move to another desktop environment. In that case, I would exactly know what was installed as part of the XFCE installation and remove only those packages.
$ sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies iceweasel lightdm
The above command installs XFCE desktop along with the Login manager LightDM and rebranded Firefox.
LightDM is a smaller, lightweight alternative to GDM
Below is a screenshot of my latest desktop
I have customised it heavily with the following -
- Greybird theme
- [Faenza Cupertino Icons][3]
- Mac Lucida Grande fonts
- Background from mota.ru