[Discuss] Debian Buster is the worst desktop OS

[Dan Ritter]

Grant Mongardi wrote: 
> All of this is fine, except the last part. The installer doesn't offer you
> a list of desktops to install, it just installs GNOME by default, so I

You chose the "do it all for me" option.

And despite previously running Debian, you installed a new
version from scratch? Why would you do that instead of upgrading
in place, which is more or less the first best thing that Debian
offers people over other distributions?

> would call that "tied to the desktop". And given that Cinnamon was the
> default desktop for the prior release I'm not sure why you would make that
> drastic a change to the default behavior.

Because nearly nobody cares. I don't know why you're so attached
to this. Let it go. 

Nobody chooses "do it all for me" unless it's their first time.
In which case, they get a reasonable experience.

If it's not their first time, they have preferences, like
cinnamon or xfce or lxde or i3 or "please don't install any
window systems at all". All of these are valid choices.

> Whatever the Debian folks decide
> is the default for their installer is the default experience that every
> user is going to experience out-of-the-box

No, just first-time users who are probably coming from Windows
or Mac expectations. For which GNOME is, much as I personally
dislike it, a reasonable thing.

> , so you would think they'd
> _want_ to make that experience pleasant and not, well, whatever this is.
> I'd call it wholly unpleasant, but that's just me.

Debian would like to make you happy. Debian offers you choices.
It's up to you to choose them. In this case, you made a choice
and it was the wrong one for you. That happens. But it turns out
that it will take less than ten minutes of your time to fix it.
And then you won't have anything to complain about!

> But fine, if I have to:
>    * Replace the desktop.

With the one that you want!

>    * Replace the software installer/updater (using the command-line
> tools?!?!)

Replace? No, I'm giving you a command line tool that is
definitely going to work. I don't know or care what sort of
graphical interface to packages you have installed, and you've
already told us that you don't trust it.

This will work and it doesn't need you to "switch". All Debian package
installers work from the same system database.

>    * Add additional optional packages

The ones that you want! Why is this a big deal? Was it a problem
for you in the past?

There are over 60,000 packages available in Debian. Not all of
them are going to be installed for everybody. Make a choice!
Test things out! Make yourself comfortable!

If you don't like a package you just installed, "sudo apt purge" and
the package name will remove it and try to remove all traces of
its installation.

You're welcome.

-dsr-