A year ago Joey Hess proposed that the next stable release of Debian comes with Xfce as the default desktop. Today…it was Joey himself who reversed the change. I leave the text of this commit in taskel.
Based on preliminary results from
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktop/Requalification/JessieSome desired data is not yet available, but at this time I am 80% sure that gnome is getting ahead in this process. This is particularly based on accessibility and to some extent integration with systemd.
Accessibility: Gnome and Mate are leading by a large margin. Some of the other desktops have improved their accessibility integration into Debian, in part driven by this process, but still need significant upstream work.
Integration with systemd / etc: Xfce, Mate, etc are stuck trying to catch up with the ongoing changes in this area. There will be time to hopefully iron out these issues during freeze once the technical stack stops shifting from below, so it's not a complete blocker for those desktops, but going to the current state, Gnome is leading.
The only factor that I think could weigh the above is size, if there is a strong desire from Debian to see a single CD with a usable standalone desktop. However, the Debian live team don't mind fitting on a traditional CD; and although the Debian CD team did not make a statement, my impression as a member is that it is no longer something that worries us enough to make it a hard blocker on the desktop by default.
Other less tangible things that influenced this decision a bit include:
- The Gnome team on Debian made a passionate case for Gnome to have a larger community, etc.
- Gnome 3 seems to have improved a lot since the last Debian release.
- The XFCE team on Debian is ambivalent about whether it should be the default desktop. Not seen many added contributions during the time it was by default in testing the last 9 months and they are still a small team.
- The Mate Debian team is making a very good case for Mate, but on the other hand it is new to Debian, without much testing or with many users. While at the same time it is basically gnome 2.0. Debian reverting bothers me, despite being a good desktop environment.
- Tasksel allows you to choose other desktops from the list, so this is just the default, which can be easily changed.
On the way, GNOME 3.14 came to the sid branch.
I love XFCE but it is true that the last month the problems with systemd are leaving it quite ko in Debian and I understand that it is going back to Gnome although I do not like it too much
That same. Although, in my case, the XFCE freezes when running Iceweasel and Chrome / Chromium at the same time.
Xfce is semi-abandoned, that's the problem. A year and a half late with respect to the schedule they gave for the new version 4.12 and with no intention of migrating to GTK3 yet. And it is a basic desktop, Xarchiver and others that are not part of the kernel are worse.
On the other hand it saddens me to see that Gnome has won. Due to fatigue, lack of rivals, whatever, but hardly rectifying what its users asked for (it still doesn't have a screensaver, it still can't change the panel, it still doesn't return the division function to Nautilus, and everything others, yes, it has I do not know what maps, what to know for what) in the end users have adapted to it. I tried Cinnamon on Jessie not long ago and it is a great desktop, but it still relies on Gnome apps and doesn't integrate in those cases, a shame. Still maybe I will install it when Jessie is stable.
Anyway, I would have bet on Mate, it can't be that Gnome does what it wants and in the end the punishment for lowering users is only temporary, 🙁.
Is it just me or did someone else notice you don't mention KDE in your entire argument? I don't understand what is the problem with KDE and Debian the truth.
according to the link Joey looked at, KDE has a downside when it comes to accessibility
Please .. tell me what the point is because I don't understand. Anyway, they will know ...
@elav https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktop/Requalification/Jessie
accessibility :: Ranking
Is the desktop accessible to the blind and those with other disabilities? Please rank the degree of accessibility of each desktop from -1 to +1.
Report from the accessibility team:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2014/09/msg00008.html
Basically, MATE is the most accessible desktop. Gnome has brought some accessibility regressions compared to that. lxde and Xfce are less accessible because things like their panel are not. cinnamon has strong accessibility issues (start menu, panel). KDE is not accessible.
There are bugs with Xfce which make it completely inaccessible for now, should be easily fixable: 760740, 760777, 760778
@diazepan That doesn't tell me anything. The Accessibility aspect is established by the Debian Team for this purpose, but it would be necessary to see what are the guidelines that they take into account when issuing their criteria, because they could perfectly be GNOME users who do not like KDE, do you understand my point ?
Now, I would like to know the opinion of the rest regarding something, what is it that makes GNOME more accessible than KDE? because from my point of view it is the opposite.
Edit ==================
Basically with regard to accessibility the following happens, according to the message from Joey Hess on the mailing list:
At this point I must say that I have never worked with a11y, and much less about KDE, so I do not know how it works in this Desktop Environment for people with low vision or some other disability.
However, and looking only at the top, there are several tools for this purpose: Kmouth, Jovie, Kmag, KMouseTool, KChartSelect.. so I go back to my starting point .. Why not KDE?
What's more, I retrace my steps, I kept reading the thread in question and there is something interesting:
WTF? What does XFCE have to do with OpenBox. Either Joey Hess got it wrong, or he really hasn't really tested the desktop environments that he has as an alternative.
As I am using XFCE, the adaptability of GTK3 is achieved with Murrina, and it seems to me that it is a temporary solution to the lack of compatibility with said framework. Also, the accessibility thing is achieved by importing features from GNOME 3.14 and thus you save yourself the hassle of accessibility (even Ubuntu does it with Unity).
Just KDE is insignificant in its popcon ... all these months GNOME and Xfce were in a technical tie in which was the most used. Of course, it seems that they are giving importance to its maintenance. A few years ago debian was always characterized by having an old KDE, almost abandoned, today it is not so, it is the DE where I am writing, and it is not bad at all.
I feel like it's almost a crusade against kde, that is really the future ...
Qt is the future, yes, but not in my KDE tastes, so I would make a medium-term bet on lxqt
All the info you need Elav:
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/tasksel/tasksel.git/commit/?id=dce99f5f8d84e4c885e6beb4cc1bb5bb1d9ee6d7
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktop/Requalification/Jessie
It seems that MATE would be the replacement of GNOME 3 in the successor of Debian Jessie, although this time it wins GNOME 3.
That will not happen @ Eliotime3000 since the development of Mate is not supported enough. Debian will continue to use a DE very well supported since they seek the stability of the distro and only a large team can offer it to you .. A team of 16 people it's very little. On the other hand, Gnome has evolved a lot and its team is immense.
That same. Let's see if I take the trouble to try GNOME 3.14 as soon as I have time to install Antergos on a friend's PC (GNOME 3.8 seems like a fiasco to me).
God Save the Gnome.
In the jessie installer betas, xfce is the default desktop, I had understood that when they reached the installer beta, no more modifications were made, but bug fixes.
I would not particularly frown on the fact that debian's default desktop was killed, xfce doesn't quite convince me and it gives a lot of silly errors with the mounting of units and things like that
I just did an installation with the beta of jessi, the netinst to be exact, and I have been pleasantly surprised that when you have to choose the desktop environment it gives you the options gnome, kde, xfce, and mate, I don't know if It is a novelty, for me yes, the last time I used it if you opted for the automatic installation (which I do not do, being "aptitude -R" my installation is as clean as any archer's) I installed gnome, it seems that now you can choose.
Greetings.
GNOME continues to lead the way in free desktop accessibility work. On the one hand, they maintain AT-SPI, which is the protocol that serves as a bridge between user applications and accessibility applications. GTK + uses this protocol and the vast majority of GNOME applications are accessible. Furthermore, the GNOME accessibility team helped their colleagues at Qt / KDE to support accessibility, which until then was almost non-existent in GNU / Linux. Qt uses AT-SPI to offer accessibility on GNU / Linux. Although Qt is accessible, there are still many KDE applications that are not. Finally, the GNOME desktop can be used without a problem without a mouse, using only the keyboard.
Orca, the screen reader maintained by GNOME, is the most popular accessibility application. In addition, the GNOME accessibility team is working on making PDF documents accessible, adding accessibility support in poppler (the PDF engine used by Evince and Okular), and making use of these new capabilities in Evince.
That must be admitted, because without GNOME (and even worse, without GTK +), there would have been no accessibility. That will hurt all of us who have abandoned it as soon as version 3 came out.
KDE could be an excellent alternative, but you see, say those who know that it is not accessible enough, I don't know, but what I can say as an end user is that this choice (GNOME's) is indifferent to me ... Total, bring the environment that each one brings can choose and install the one they want.
If you remove the "Alternate Desktop Enviroments" option in Debian, I will leave it there.
By default they will put whatever they want, but in a distro like Debian intended for non-beginners, everyone installs what they want. The first thing I did in Debian Testing was to uninstall Xfce and put KDE, which goes perfectly with systemd, it is beautiful, powerful and far from mythology, it consumes less ram and processor than Gnome or Cinnamon.
and I say, what does it matter? debian always makes a specific iso for each of the desktops that it supports and users at the end download the iso with the desktop of their choice.
and of course the community is the host too, making mountains out of a grain of sand. then most of those who use debian install the base system and build from there.
As for my opinion, I don't like that gnome3 is precisely the chosen one. I use xfce and I love it but I admit that it is quite comatose due to lack of staff. I would have preferred mate, really.
Let's see if for debian 9, we already have lxde-qt, which is a desktop with a lot of potential and future.
Well, from my point of view, I do not know why they choose gnome, eye is tremendous DE, but currently it is being updated because of it, I do not know but really for a stable release it is adequate for it I cannot find it in gnome, to be honestly rather I see something unstable to enter the stable branch its point would be better the testing or the sid.
Xfce has many strengths but at the same time it has a great low point, it is that it is not updated as often as it should in turn make decisions, which library to use to be more modern desktops LXDE made its decision and is really on the way did well. In that XFCE takes a lot of time and they should focus on it, I am really a happy user of XFCE, but that topic of libraries has made me think, if I am seeing as an alternative Enlightenment as a good option only to test how I fit through now I am happy in XFCE.
Greetings!.
I agree with that. KDE is a good desktop environment, but I find it somewhat heavy (although I have noticed that it is lighter than Windows Aero and Aqua from OSX). However, I have had one or another problem when using GIMP and when changing themes that made me stop using it in Debian.
I don't understand why they don't consider kde
and for a long time it has been the most stable modern desktop
also gnome has no weight advantage in iso
I think it is a very good decision .. Keep in mind that Gnome from version 3.8 onwards knows something else .. It is a very good environment and it is the most productive environment that exists in Linux. Also keep in mind that XFCE is "stopped" in the past, the move to GTK3 is not complete and version 4.12 knows when it comes ... And for those who do not like Gnome, they can always choose to install another environment.
I am comfortable with XFCE, although what is uncomfortable is that it does not come with the most recurring keyboard shortcuts (such as the screenshot, the Super key to open the Windows applications menu).
so after so many years ... KDE wins for its synergies. Let everything paste.
With how easy it is to set up Crunchbang… .ay.
Debian Stable + Openbox, what can go wrong?
Erase the conky from the operating instructions and not have the slightest idea how to use the Openbox keyboard shortcuts? : v
Whatever they say, I would like it to have Mate as the default desktop, hahaha it's very good and it's still a universal desktop.
Anyway, debian will be interesting with gnome 3.12 since 3.4 still did not work well what the gnome wanted to present us, apart from that version 3.4 has a problem with a package tracker-miner-fs that explains why it consumes of nothing all the cpu and part of the ram luckily from 3.6 onwards that was fixed, on the other hand I have been using all gnome 3 up to 3.12 and partially 3.14 I can say that from 3.8 onwards it behaves excellent, the accessibility As far as the subject is discussed, it is good and quick to enable, so it is a good decision that debian have returned to gnome, for those who are criticizing without having tried the different versions of gnome 3, what a shame for those people who They live from the past, because as I emphasize in each new version they improve every detail.
That same. GNOME 3.8 is very fluid and the truth is that, in contrast to what they wanted to show in GNOME 3.4, now you can say a GNOME 3 well done.
Regarding GNOME Shell Classic, will this setting be unique to RHEL / CentOS? Because I've already gotten used to GNOME 2.
The configuration is not exclusive if not how many distros have put the classic shell or interested in doing that, the case is only to enable some shell plugins, so that it gives you the same result, in this case there are 5 plugins so that gnome shell takes the form of gnome classic session, they are the following: gnome-shell-extension-alternate-tab, gnome-shell-extension-apps-menu, gnome-shell-extension-launch-new-instance, gnome-shell-extension-places-menu, gnome -shell-extension-window-list, it would be those and nothing else would be left to configure each extension to suit everyone.
I don't like gnome, but as long as MATE can be used on Debian, I don't care what the default Debian desktop is. At the moment I use Point Linux based on debian 7 stable, with MATE 1.4.2 writing and it goes very fast, everything works very well. 🙂
What a disappointment, I thought they would change their desktop environment but they are still closed in continuing to use GNOME by default without having tried alternatives such as KDE, XFCE or if it is for resource issues such as LXDE since it is a distribution that is usually used on web servers.