Dear Maintainer,

I found that many people complain about non gnome-core packages installed by
metapackage gnome.

I think, maybe we could add a gnome-non-core metapackage, thus people could remove
less important components like libreoffice if they installed full gnome.

Then, gnome=gnome-core+gnome-non-core.

This work should be easy to do but it depends on your decision.

Thanks.

There have been several requests for something like this. gnome-core
is intended to closely match what GNOME upstream considers to be core.
Some people want to have more control over what apps are installed.

My initial thinking for a name for this metapackage is gnome-minimal.

I'm not sure what this metapackage would look like. Would it be as
simple as Depends: gnome-session, gdm3 (which will ensure that
gnome-shell, gnome-control-center, and xdg-desktop-portal-gnome are
installed)?

Should it have Recommends on many GNOME Core apps? Which ones?

I guess it should have Suggests for all the GNOME Core apps. apt will
keep a suggested package installed if a package that had previously
depended on it or recommend it no longer does that or is no longer
installed.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha

Thanks so much for your attention!

IMHO, gnome-minimal is accurate name and it can suggest all the GNOME
Core apps.

Back to my basic idea, what I really needs is actually an installer
menu, GNOME Core, Gnome Minimal or whatever. To realize a desktop with
simplicity, I need to do a minimal installation with no selections.
Then I boot into debian and apt install gnome-core.

I guess it will be hard to persuade installer author to add a third
GNOME option, apart from GNOME and GNOME Flashback. Thus I put forward
an idea to reduce the difficulties to simplify GNOME.

I will also be happy to have a gnome-minimal package to enhance
customization :)

gnome-minimal -> gnome-core -> gnome

Three stages.

Best regards,
EiPi Fun/Don Xu,
Dec 5, 2025