Xfce on Debian Linux

To the uninitiated, different flavours of desktop can be installed on Debian Linux. Common ones are Gnome (default on Debian Squeeze), KDE and Xfce. A desktop includes all those icons for someone to click on and to start their common tasks like watching videos.

My situation is like this: I don't need a charming desktop. I don't need flashy graphical effects after clicking something. I need a lightweight desktop. I appreciate a minimalist style. Xfce is definitely one of the choices there. Today, I decide to try Xfce. First, I uninstalled Gnome.



$ aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep gnome | cut -f 1`
$ aptitude -f install
$ aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f 1`
$ aptitude -f install

Next, I install Xfce.

$ aptitude install xfce4
$ aptitude install xdm

Without xdm, I need to type

$ startx

to bring up the graphical interface. After installing xdm, I can see a graphical login screen. I don't need to use the startx command.

Xfce looks like Microsoft Windows 95. Someone who has used Windows 95 should be able to use Xfce. Anyway, beauty is not my concern. My concern is to use less memory and to let things work.

I need the terminal. If you are like me, you will want to install xfce4-terminal.

$ aptitude install xfce4-terminal

I can use the copy and paste functions easily and I can increase the text size as well.

Restarting the machine, and using

$ top

to view the memory used:

212860 kb (around 200 mb)

I like this really low memory usage for a desktop.

In that case, I never care about beauty and I just want things to work.



Video:

LibreOffice 4 and Xfce on Debian Linux

http://youtu.be/OJYoIZ4WwKY


Reference:

Xfce - Debian Wiki 
http://wiki.debian.org/Xfce