Hi,

I just installed Debian stable in a virtual machine. When I was asked
during the installation process which "meta-packages" to install I
left "Desktop Environment" selected but explicitly deselected GNOME. I
expected to end up with a minimal graphical environment, e.g. X with
twm and xterm or similar. However, I was surprised to find out after
installation that indeed the entire GNOME desktop was installed albeit
me explicitly deselecting it during installation.

The reason seems to be that task-desktop Recommends a whole list of
alternative desktop environments with task-desktop-gnome being the
first on the list -- and since Recommends are installed by default and
since the first of a list of alternatives is installed by default,
this is how I ended up getting GNOME installed, although I didn't even
want it. The outcome is the same as if I had left the GNOME checkbox
selected, which is quite surpsising and unexpected to me.

Please consider introducing an absolute bare minimum package to let
task-desktop depend on (by means of Recommends) instead of falling
back to GNOME. Thanks!

Cheers,

 - Fabian

Hi,

Fabian Greffrath <fabian@debian.org> wrote (Thu, 21 Oct 2021 12:25:35 +0200):

Selecting "Desktop Environment", but not choose one of the displayed
possiblities (like "GNOME", "KDE" and so on) is not the way, how this
dialog was designed, I guess.

If you want a graphical desktop, select "Desktop Environment" and one of
the options under it; or if you dont't want a graphical UI, deselect all
those options.
There is no way in between of these two.

This is not optimal of course, and there have been reports from people, who
where irritated by the functionality of this dialog in the past as well.

I could imagine a solution, where the checkbox in the first line "Desktop
Environment" is not directly changeable at all, but gets automatically
checked or unchecked, if the user selects one of the desktop environment
options below (or does not check any of them).
Or the first line having no checkbox at all would be even better.

Don't know, if something like this is possible with debconf...


Holger

Hi Holger,

thanks for your reply!

Am 21.10.2021 16:31, schrieb Holger Wansing:

Yes, apparently. :/

Yes, one of these options would clearly help improve this experience.

Thanks!

Cheers,

  - Fabian

I think this is exactly the way it was designed. Whether the design
is the best is what has been brought up in this report.

There is the concept of "default desktop". At the present time it is
Gnome. The first selection is for the default. The description for
task-desktop says:

  This task package is used to install the Debian desktop.

Regards,

Brian.

Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> writes:

The outcome is the same if one does any of: setting just "Desktop
Environment"; setting just Gnome; or setting both of them at the same
time.  The reason being that setting just "Desktop Environment" results
in you getting the default desktop, which currently happens to be Gnome.

If there was a way of making "Desktop Environment" be a section heading
instead, without it having a checkbox next to it, that would have been
done, but AFAIK that is not currently possible with the way that the
menu is assembled.

Sadly, that's rather misleading.

Cheers, Phil.

Am Donnerstag, dem 21.10.2021 um 18:33 +0100 schrieb Brian Potkin:

The results are pretty surprising and unpredictable, though.

You don't have a chance to read the description of the task-desktop
package during d-i. As Holger already stated, it must be made clear
that merely selecting "Desktop Environment" will have the same effect
as selecting the first one in the list, even if this has been
explicitly unselected.

 - Fabian

Indeed. Many users, myself included, have stared at the choices and
wondered what the first choice implies. "Default - Gnome" next to it
might have helped.

Fortunately, not selecting it isn't of any consequence. A user gets
what else is chosen.

No, that is not the case. Selecting "Desktop Environment" only will
have the effect of selecting the default desktop. This could be Xfce,
which is not the first one in the list.

Cheers,

Brian.

Am 21.10.2021 21:05, schrieb Brian Potkin:

I don't consider it "fortunate", it is inconsistent that having that
choice selected or not does not make a difference as long as any other
choice is selected. And that having that choice selected but none of the
others will indeed install one of the others.

Yes, right, that's on non-amd64/non-i386. That's even more confusing,
that selecting the generic choice but not explicitly selecting any of
the choices in the list will implicitly install the third choice in that
list.

  - Fabian