I've installed Debian -12.0 (Trixie?) today and I politely request some apt magic you'll hopefully have at your fingertips. I have gnome where I want xfce, because I pressed return instead of spacebar. My box simply ran away and started doing stuff, and the die was cast.

If I simply install xfce and uninstall gnome (there is overlap between them), will that work? Or do I have to get running on xfce and then remove gnome?

Other than that and the fact that I can't decode the grub entry, it seems ok, painless even. I don't plan heavy use of debian anyhow.

12 is Bookworm.
Trixie is Testing (will be 13 in a couple of years.)

Use tasksel to select Xfce and deselect Gnome, then maybe "apt autoremove" to cleanup any remnants.

If you just installed it, why not just reinstall, and select the right desktop in the first place? The slow part of the install is when it downloads the desktop, and you gotta do that anyway even if you do it manually.

Er, yes. I have 12.2, released in October last.

Tasksel just appears to install software groups. I unchecked gnome and checked xfce. I got an extra 130 files/packages of stuff that looked like xfce. Apt autoremove removed nothing.

X booting appears to be handled by /etc/X11/Xsession, which is a global type script. I did move /etc/Xsession.d/55gnome-something, and left /etc/Xsession.d/55xfce-something, but that didn't fix it either.

One web search later, I got running on xfce. There's a gearwheel on the login screen offering a choice of window managers, so I selected xfce, booted on that, and ran 'sudo apt remove gnome'

Next boot, my default choice was xfce

Hrm, thought I remembered tasksel having an uninstall as well - otherwise not sure there's much point; one could just do "apt install task-xfce-desktop" instead.

On that note, you might want to try "apt remove task-gnome-desktop", otherwise, if you installed with "recommended" enabled (which is the default), you might still have a few extra packages that are dependencies of that package but not the gnome package.

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Right - will do. I got the subject right - I did need apt arguments. So I'm basically running fine at this stage, except anything I want to do in Debian requires a web search. I didn't realise quite how incompetent I am at this Debian stuff.

I did get Zoom installed in Debian. My PC emerged from it's power supply troubles rebooting once a day randomly (Mid afternoon usually), and rebooting every 5 minutes on Zoom . The main fix for my issues was to reset & clear the BIOS. Zoom in Slackware reboots every 5 minutes. I tried Zoom in Windows 11 - reboots after 5 minutes . Now I'll try Debian. Debian isn't on my nvme, but is on a spinning rust drive.

Apt Magic Indeed! Thank you.

That command removed 144 packages, vs. hardly anything for 'sudo apt remove gnome.' Kind of unintuitive, obtuse, scary, but efficient.

What's more, running Zoom on Debian breaks the 5 minute barrier. That makes no sense really. But when I say that Slackware and Windows 11 are on an nvme, and Debian is on spinning rust, it certainly gives me a new approach. As I'm now able to run with the nvme unmounted, I can let smartctl loose on it. It also means I'm stuck on spinning rust until the next random reboot. Mind you, rebooting once a day randomly makes no sense, neither does reboots every 5 minutes under Zoom. But Zoom itself makes no sense; it's just something we have to use.