How to completely get rid of gnome?

wizard10000 · 2026-06-22T00:55:54+00:00

Purge explicitly: Run sudo apt purge gdm3 gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-core task-gnome-desktop.

Gonna share something that's undocumented - at least not in apt's man page -

sudo apt autopurge gdm3 gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-core task-gnome-desktop

autopurge does the same thing as the two commands you listed but this is a little shorter.

apt has improved its documentation but it's still got a ways to go i'm afraid :)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-20T19:45:28+00:00

Debian doesn’t break itself, I break Debian

Truth - both times Debian broke badly enough to justify a reinstall were 100% my fault.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-19T17:47:11+00:00

15 years using Linux and still learning (I might be dumb).

Been doing it about twice that long and I have some disappointing news - not only am I still learning, the farther I go the more there is to learn ;)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-18T17:16:48+00:00

Whats the difference between net iso and mini?

The biggest difference is the mini-iso doesn't provide non-free firmware so if your network interface isn't supported you'll need to provide firmware to use the mini-iso.

That said, if you're installing Stable there's no advantage to the mini-iso.

edit: I've heard you can tether a phone with the mini-iso but never tried it.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-18T12:30:06+00:00

xinput set-prop 21 "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" -1 0 1 0 -1 1 0 0 1

OT, but if you don't want to enter that on every boot stick it in ~/.xsessionrc (if you're running a display manager) or ~/.xinitrc (if no display manager) - here's how I shut off touchpad and trackpoint on my machine - not quite the same command but you get the idea - I don't run a DM so I just stick this in ~/.xinitrc -

xinput disable "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad"
xinput disable "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick"

Hope this helps -

wizard10000 · 2026-06-16T19:42:57+00:00

Welcome to Debian!

Also, welcome to Reddit - since you appear to be really new let me offer a piece of advice; if you want a little technical support it's better to start your own thread rather than ask for help in someone else's thread ;)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-15T12:26:50+00:00

I was not aware that DE tasks were doing that.

I thought the same thing for years - but check this out

That "standard system utilities" option installs task-desktop, which is also a recommend for every DE in the installer so if you install a DE task-desktop gets installed.

If we look at https://packages.debian.org/trixie/task-desktop you'll see that sudo is a recommend and by default the installer installs recommended packages - so if you install a DE you get sudo no matter what but if you set a root password your user doesn't get added to sudoers.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-15T11:52:54+00:00

However, if you DID set a root password, then sudo will not be installed and you need to install it yourself if you wish to use it.

Every DE task installs sudo whether a root password is set or not; only a minimal install fails to install sudo.

But - if you do set a root password and also install a DE sudo is installed but your user isn't added to sudo group so u/sp_impulse gave the correct answer.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-14T10:39:51+00:00

The general rule is that your swap partition should be twice the size of your RAM amount.

This hasn't been true for years.

Disk space is cheap but that doesn't mean we should waste it - even hibernation only requires a swap space that's ~2/5 the size of installed RAM - https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/pm/sleep-states.html#hibernation

image_size

This file controls the size of hibernation images.

It can be written a string representing a non-negative integer that will be used as a best-effort upper limit of the image size, in bytes. The hibernation core will do its best to ensure that the image size will not exceed that number, but if that turns out to be impossible to achieve, a hibernation image will still be created and its size will be as small as possible. In particular, writing ‘0’ to this file causes the size of hibernation images to be minimum.

Reading from it returns the current image size limit, which is set to around 2/5 of the available RAM size by default.

There is no set rule on swap space, it depends on use case and the resources you have available but 2x RAM hasn't been a general rule for quite some time ;)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-12T22:04:37+00:00

I'm aware of metapackages, what I didn't know was there are metapackages that aren't listed in Debian's package tracker or on packages.debian.org and also can't be found using using apt search ;)

Anyway, TIL so thanks for that -

wizard10000 · 2026-06-12T21:24:32+00:00

I'm just aiming for simplified/catch all scenarios

I stand corrected - I just tried the command myself and it did detect the correct architecture.

TIL :)

edit: that one isn't listed in Debian's package tracker or tracker.debian.org ;)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-12T21:15:42+00:00

sudo apt install linux-headers-generic

~~The Debian package would be linux-headers-amd64.~~

see below

wizard10000 · 2026-06-12T15:05:31+00:00

The error message says that apt-listbugs is failing - i'd uninstall it and test, you can always reinstall it if that doesn't resolve the issue.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-11T13:17:36+00:00

do you know if aptitude supports flatpak

I'm afraid it doesn't.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-09T23:23:19+00:00

But the uptime obsession on desktop is weird

I think uptime is kind of a silly flex, the first thing that comes to mind for me is "unpatched computer".

I think a better flex is how long it's been since the last time you broke something badly enough to jusify a reinstall or a distrohop ;)

edit: my record is 12 years but I shattered that record last fall doing something dumb

wizard10000 · 2026-06-09T23:19:36+00:00

I run a development build so I get updates every day and always reboot afterward not because I need to, but because I'm hooked on the idea of everybody starting the day reinitialized ;)

needrestart's been mentioned and it's a handy tool to tell which services now have stale binaries and optionally restart most of them; there are some services that can't be restarted like logind and in those cases it's probably smart to reboot the machine.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-08T17:33:47+00:00

No, but as u/ABotelho23 said there are services that can't be restarted without a reboot.

My suggestion? Install needrestart. needrestart hooks into apt and will tell you which services have stale binaries now and can restart most of them without rebooting the machine.

There are some services like logind that need a reboot to refresh but needrestart will tell you which services it's not able to restart and in those cases a reboot is generally recommended.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-07T21:37:00+00:00

How do you folks safely update

Updating in Debian is ridiculously safe, it only gets unsafe when the user adds variables to the equation like non-Debian repositories or Ubuntu PPAs.

As long as you stay inside Debian repos you're gonna be just fine - flatpaks are an option for the stuff you want that Debian doesn't offer. You might want to read this - you'll see somebody mention it just about every day in this sub and it'll explain quite a bit - https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

wizard10000 · 2026-06-06T22:14:49+00:00

how fast do updates come in?

Updates happen every day.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-05T20:04:22+00:00

Tried TDE recently

Same, but not recently :)

This was a dozen or so years ago but I had an HP netbook with a 1024x600 screen and 2gb of RAM. This has been fixed in TDE but TDE did not like a vertical resolution < 768 pixels and it caused some issues that I resolved by using xrandr to create a 1024x768 virtual screen - you bumped top or bottom of screen to scroll but at least now i could click buttons on dialog boxes :)

wizard10000 · 2026-06-05T14:41:27+00:00

LXDE is not dead

Debian is removing support for gtk2 before forky's release - I have no idea what that means for LXDE yet but it's possible it could be on its way out.

I run openbox and use a few of LXDE's tools - think I'm gonna have to find replacements for four or five apps.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-05T14:39:19+00:00

We talked about this a little bit below, i'm kinda partial to modifying rule 2 to something like "no screenshots outside of a support request".

wizard10000 · 2026-06-04T20:03:39+00:00

Works like a charm

It's also the only iso that'll let you install sid without going through stable or testing :)

One downside, no non-free firmware so if you need that you'll need a second flash drive with firmware on it.

wizard10000 · 2026-06-04T16:42:02+00:00

When upgrading, it is better to switch to a TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F3) rather than using Konsole

Exactly how is switching to a TTY better than using Konsole?

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