I'm very glad to see this happen, for a coincidental reason. Xfce is a great DE and a solid implementation of the traditional desktop UI paradigm that many of us ("us" being power users) are comfortable with and productive in. While the major players (Apple, Canonical, Microsoft) chase after the latest UI fads in an attempt to appease casual users, we're the ones getting the shaft.
It is a matter of taste. I use Xfce because it's fast but on fast machines I have no problem using Gnome Shell with plugins that give functionality which is at least as good, if not better. Unity is less customizable but has improved some details and is quite usable; Compiz is ridiculously customizable in any case, even if you don't want the dock. And there are several good tiling WMs, etc.
Now as ever, there is no shortage of good desktops and window managers to choose from on Linux, for the 'power user' ... again, it's a matter of taste. Not a matter of some terrible betrayal by one or another distro.
Try running Unity in a VM on a machine that doesn't have graphics resources to spare. Try running Unity or Unity 2D in a VM on a machine that lacks VT-d. It is horrific.
He's riffing off the parent's use of the word "fad", where the parent used it in a quote as if someone had once called it a fad, even though it turned out to be something that stayed around.
No, Debian is not going to use "Xfce by default". There is a ongoing discussion on debian-devel about what to put on CD1 (for people who install with CDs and no network), as Gnome and KDE do not fit anymore. Putting Xfce by default solves this issue, so does using xz compression for .debs. But no consensus has been reached : this has been committed in git, but no package has been released yet.
And as others have said, defaults are mostly irrelevant (or most people would use Vim in Vi-compatible mode). Debian is a software distribution, which is only a way to deliver software to your computer. You can install whatever DE or WM you wish :)
This news was initially announced by Phoronix. Later other people added interesting things that were left out by Phoronix.
E.g. that the change for one was to push for support for xz compressed archives. That support has quickly gone through. Furthermore, that maybe sticking to 650MB is not that sane anymore, as apparently buying CDROM readers has already been impossible for many years in loads of South American countries. Instead, something like 1GB might be considered.
Ubuntu user and not Debian but XFCE is awesome. It's my default environment after trying out Gnome 2, Gnome 3 (Shell), Unity, Cinnamon, KDE and whatever else I could get my hands on.
I did the same - I'd been clinging onto the outdated 10.04 LTS for some time, because I didn't want to move to either Unity or Gnome 3 (tried both for a fortnight each, in daily use, and just couldn't be as productive on either).
Eventually, after having a go with Xfce and finding it reasonably good, I tried the latest Kubuntu (12.04, KDE 4.8) and really love it. Every time I come across an annoyance[1], there's a checkbox somewhere to turn it off, or change it to work how I want.
[1] Annoyances for me include things like doing something just because I move the mouse somewhere - like showing an Exposé just because I put my mouse in the top-left corner.
Using a better compression algorythm (LZMA2) is also planned by Debian maintainers to make gnome fit on the CD.
So this commit will probably be reverted before the final release.
It might be that the 700MB size limit is just an excuse to dump GNOME 3 and not the most important reason. Given the conservativeness of Debian releases, I wouldn't be surprised if the Debian team decided to wait for GNOME 3 to become more mature. Remember, Debian shipped a stable release with KDE 3 even after KDE 4 was released.
"... Hess explained that the measures ensure that the standard desktop will fit on the first installation CD, which GNOME currently does not ... Unfortunately, Debian does not have a well-defined procedure for making such choices, So, I've decided to be bold ..."
And that's the only reason? This is a big step, no evaluation, asking users? Is this the only reason Gnome isn't being adopted because it won't fit on the install?
In my experience, very few people use the default settings when installing Debian. Most people specifically choose the WM they want during the install. For example, in my case, I've used Debian for 7 years, and I don't think I've ever used the default. But since it has to default to something, might as well pick the WM that fits on a CD.
People who blindly accept the default settings use Mint or one of the *buntu distros.
Long time Linux desktop user. After using ArchLinux for just over six months with Xfce, I recently switched to Debian Squeeze. I'm so glad that Xfce will be the default DE. Its simple and gets the job done.
Ubuntu 12.04 user. But having been through multiple linux desktop starting with Fedora 9, am now tired. For my next box i want a basic linux kernel + bash + Xserver + xmonad WM. nothing fancier.
I bought a new laptop a few days ago. Ubuntu 12.04 makes it useable. I have multitouch laptop you cann't believe how much productive I am when I learned to use the few built in gestures and started making my own. It is very fast.
It came with Windows 7 which made it just dog ugly and slow, but then, I only had the default Windows installation for 2 hours ..
I was the same, made the jump to awesome wm instead (because I heard it had better multihead support (3 screens here) although I'm sure there is little in it) and couldn't be happier
Yep, am considering debian, ArchLinux, gentoo. Ofcourse building all the packages i need on top of the base. Right now, that's how the priority stands, but might move up ArchLinux.
This is a confluence of three cultural impedance mismatches.
The first is that some non-Debian distros focus themselves primarily on selecting exactly one, and only and forever one, DE for the distro. I don't know why this annoying fad spread into an annoying industry standard a couple years ago (OK maybe a decade ago). So Kubuntu = KDE and Ubuntu = Gnome and never the two shall switch, ever, without a wipe and reformat and reinstall of something else. Debian is culturally different and you just install what you want. Its almost like a bad Zen koan. "All states have a state religion. The US has no state religion. What is the state religion of the US?" Well its a question that culturally makes no sense. Sound of one hand clapping. Mu. So there is no official DE for Debian, and thats good and how it should be and we all like it like that. But it makes conversations awkward and weird at a cultural level.
The second cultural mismatch is there's a pretty intense focus on being able to distribute A Debian cdrom (emphasis on singular) that will boot and install a minimal system in Debian. This demand or desire or cultural trait requires that some working subset of Debian be found that will fit in 650 MB. Other distros just don't care or perhaps they only really support netinst or perhaps their "minimal single disk install" is a SL (or DL?) DVD. Gnome and KDE just are not going to fit along with the required stuff on a single 650 meg cdrom, so bye bye. I see this gradually shifting in Debian... I haven't done a "single disk install" in many years... All PXEboot netinst for many years. I think my experience is common that sometime in the 00s I switched from optical media to USB/netinst "media". But this cultural trait is how it used to be and it still has momentum. Someday momentum will build in a new direction, but it hasn't yet, maybe next release? In the Debian culture you flow with the river or at most try minimal diversion, you don't shout at the waves or lead a cavalry charge into the ocean.
The third cultural mismatch is corporate or semi-corporate distros make UI and all other decisions based on marketing, PR, mostly a bunch of tail chasing imagination of what a theoretical user might like, or what we will tell them to like. Extremely top down organization where the packagers are told exactly what to do. However the Debian people make Debian "for their users" and the most important users with the biggest voice are the Debian devs themselves... Its a intensely bottom up organization. Out in the real world, no one seriously WANTS to use KDE or Gnome, they just feel in an "emperor has no clothes" way that yes they personally don't like either, but that mythical "everyone else" just loves gnome and/or kde so they'll go along to get along and select one. No one in Debian would (intentionally) stand in the way of the work of other maintainers, so if someone wants to package KDE or Gnome, the mythical "everyman developer" wouldn't stop them, but if no one wants to use KDE or Gnome, the mythical "everyman developer" is not going to force everyone else to use one, just like they wouldn't force a maintainer or user to do things in general. Another way to look at it, is its very social darwinist, we'll package up some software and if people want it, it grows, if not, it disappears. Not an intelligent design approach were the C*O and VPs decide which software will live and die. Its very hard to map top-down cultural thinking about what DE they'll force the users to use, into a bottom-up culture like Debian. So its weird / uncomfortable / difficult to even discuss the concept of what we'll force the users to use. It doesn't culturally make sense to use top-down talk to discuss the behavior of a bottom-up org.
The TLDR version, is that culturally this whole argument doesn't make any sense in Debian.
So Kubuntu = KDE and Ubuntu = Gnome and never the two shall switch, ever
That's not true. It's pretty easy to switch them around or install both (or neither, in the case of Ubuntu Server): 'apt-get install ubuntu-desktop' versus 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop'. Ubuntu shares the same underlying package repository for all variants.
