Do I need to install the desktop env when installing a distro or do I need to install blank Linux and install a clean desktop env later? Thank you! 😃👌
Do I need to install the desktop env when installing a distro or do I need to install blank Linux and install a clean desktop env later? Thank you! 😃👌
It makes sense to install a Desktop Environment during the installation. If you install a really bare-boned Linux installation without DE you might even end up without a graphical display manager to login making things complicated for a new Linux user.
I don’t care about the difficulty only wants to know what is the best in the case of not installing to much packages, having a clean Linux distro
Okay, good :) You can try for yourself. Install bare-boned Linux, and then install for example fvwm, a light weight Window Manager. Fair chance that for example on Debian you will have to figure out which more packages (e.g. xinit and xorg and fonts) to install to make the GUI work. I like Debian for reasons, but the software package dependencies are not always on par with the package installations is my experience.
If you want a clean install, go for a carefully curated set of packages, rather than trying to mix and match to create your own selection - that’s bound to result in a Frankenstein installation.
I’m partial to Fedora Silverblue, which is essentially just a single package containing the things you need to have a usable desktop. You can install what you need separately on top of that, but on updates, the whole base gets replaced wholesale - including, which is most relevant to your concerns, removing stuff that is no longer used/needed, rather than having that clog up over time.
+1 for Fedora Silverblue (and, by extension, the other atomic desktops)! I’ve been using Kinoite for a few months now and it might be the easiest time I’ve had on a distro yet.
As someone who has tired of toying around with things on my daily driver, I switched to Silverblue about six months ago and there’s basically no upkeep. Love it.
There are options to start at any level you feel comfortable with. In the far end of not installing anything is Linux From Scratch. As the name implies, you start from nothing. I don’t recommend this unless you have specific reasons. If you want a small command line only system to start from there’s plenty of those, many distros offer this choice. Arch, Debian, etc.