Debian 7 Wheezy to switch to Xfce as the 'default' DE

[vrkalak]

Debian developers are planning to switch the default desktop environment of Debian 7 codenamed Wheezy from Gnome to XFCE. The move comes mainly to make the distro lightweight and also reduce the size of the installation image.

Joey Hess posted in Debian Tasksel:

This ensures that the desktop will fit on CD#1, which gnome currently does not. There may be other reasons to prefer xfce as the default as well, but that is a complex and subjective topic. Unfortunatly, Debian does not have a well-defined procedure for making such choices, though it certianly has well-defined procedures for reviewing them. So, I've decided to be bold, and continue the tradition of making an arbitrary desktop selection for Debian in tasksel.

Some of the top distros like Ubuntu and LinuxMint have switched to alternate DEs like Unity and Cinnamon/MATE, as their default desktop environment.
Does this move reflect less trust in Gnome 3?

http://www.muktware.com/4087/debian-whe ... nvironment

[caf4926]

Guess someone thinks that is a good choice.
Some may agree, others may not.

Personally, I find it a bit of a turn off.

[xenopeek]

I just installed Debian 7 from netinstall over the weekend, and not having that much experience with Debian's installer (or perhaps this is just the current situation) ended up getting Gnome 3 installed while I had wanted to install Xfce (I never got to choose my DE). It was installed easily enough, but I wasted some time downloading and installing all the Gnome 3 packages... Glad to see my next install may be easier

[gn2]

Some of the top distros like Ubuntu and LinuxMint have switched to alternate DEs like Unity and Cinnamon/MATE, as their default desktop environment.
Does this move reflect less trust in Gnome 3?

I think in the case of Unity it is more about Canonical attempting to increase brand identity and in the case of Cinnamon/MATE it is Mint trying to offer an alternative to that brand.

As far as Debian Wheezy is concerned, I think the switch to Xfce is more about reluctance to move away from the familiar CD size images.
To my thinking I would rather they stuck with Gnome 3 and abandoned the outdated CD.
Lets face it, optical media is just so last millenium.

[Mike+9]

I would like them to be sort of like Mint is, with the power of choice to the user to select which DE to chose.

[nunol]

I thought that moving from gzip -9 compression to xz -9e for key packages or even all packages was going to solve the problem.

I guess it didn't... good! XFCE works better for me than the default Gnome Shell.

Debian 5 and 6 had a shared XFCE and LXDE CD, have to find out what is going to happen for LXDE in Debian 7.