GNOME has, for some reason or another,
always been the default desktop environment in Debian since the installer is
able to install a full desktop environment by default. Release after release,
Debian has been shipping different versions of GNOME, first based on the
venerable 1.2/1.4 series, then moving to the time-based GNOME 2.x series,
and finally to the newly designed 3.4 series for the last stable release,
Debian 7 ‘wheezy’.
During the final stages of wheezy’s development, it was pointed out that
the first install CD image would not longer hold all of the required packages
to install a full GNOME desktop environment. There was lots of discussion
surrounding this bug or fact, and there were two major reactions to it. The
Debian GNOME team rebuilt some key packages so they would be compressed using
xz instead of gzip, saving the few megabytes that
were needed to squeeze everything in the first CD. In parallel, the tasksel
maintainer decided
switching to Xfce as default
desktop was another obvious fix. This change, unannounced and two days before
the freeze, was very contested and spurred the usual massive debian-devel
threads. In the end, and after a few default desktop flip flops, it was agreed
that GNOME would remain as the default for the already frozen wheezy release,
and this issue would be revisited later on during jessie’s
development.
And indeed, some months ago, Xfce was again reinstated as Debian’s
default desktop for jessie as announced:
― Joey Hess in dfca406eb694e0ac00ea04b12fc912237e01c9b5.
Suffice to say that the Debian GNOME team participants have never been
thrilled about how the whole issue is being handled, and we’ve been wondering
if we should be doing anything about it, or just move along and enjoy
the smaller amount of bug reports against GNOME packages that this change would
bring us, if it finally made it through to the final release. During our real
life meet-ups in FOSDEM and the systemd+GNOME sprint
in Antwerp, most members of the team did feel Debian would not be
delivering a graphical environment with the polish we think our users deserve,
and decided we at least should try to convince the rest of the Debian project
and our users that Debian will be best suited by shipping GNOME 3.12 by
default. Power users, of course, can and know how to get around this default
and install KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE or whatever other choice they have. For
the average user, though, we think we should be shipping GNOME by default, and
tasksel should revert the above commit again. Some of our reasons are:
Accessibility: GNOME continues to be the only free desktop
environment that provides full accessibility coverage, right from login screen.
While it’s true GNOME 3.0 was lacking in many areas, and GNOME 3.4 (which we
shipped in wheezy) was just barely acceptable thanks to some last minute GDM
fixes, GNOME 3.12 should have ironed out all of the issues and our non-expert
understanding is that a11y support is now on par with what GNOME 2.30 from
squeeze offered.
Downstream health: The number of active members in the
team taking care of GNOME in Debian is around 5-10 persons, while it is 1-2 in
the case of Xfce. Being the default desktop draws a lot of attention (and bug
reports) that only a bigger team might have the resources to handle.
Upstream health: While GNOME is still committed to its
time-based release schedule and ships new versions every 6 months, Xfce
upstream is, unfortunately, struggling a bit more to keep up with new plumbing
technology. Only very recently it has regained support to suspend/hibernate via
logind, or support for Bluez 5.x, for example.
Community: GNOME is one of the biggest free software
projects, and is lucky to have created an ecosystem of developers, documenters,
translators and users that interact regularly in a live social community. Users
and developers gather in hackfests and big, annual conferences like
GUADEC, the
Boston Summit, or
GNOME.Asia. Only KDE has a comparable
community, the rest of the free desktop projects don’t have the userbase or
humanpower to sustain communities like this.
Localization: Localization is more extensive and complete
in GNOME. Xfce has 18 languages above 95% of coverage, and 2 at 100%
(excluding English). GNOME has 28 languages above 95%, 9 of them being
complete (excluding English).
Documentation: Documentation coverage is extensive in
GNOME, with most of the core applications providing localized, up to date and
complete manuals, available in an accessible format via the Help reader.
Integration: The level of integration between components
is very high in GNOME. For example, instant messaging, agenda and accessibility
components are an integral part of the desktop. GNOME is closely integrated to
NetworkManager, PulseAudio, udisks and upower so that the user has access to
all the plumbing in a single place. GNOME also integrates easily with online
accounts and services (ownCloud, Google, MS Exchange…).
Hardware: GNOME 3.12 will be one of the few desktop
environments to support HiDPI displays, now very common on some laptop models.
Lack of support for HiDPI means non-technical users will get an unreadable
desktop by default, and no hints on how to fix that.
Security: GNOME is more secure. There are no processes
launched with root permissions on the user’s session. All everyday operations
(package management, disk partitioning and formatting, date/time
configuration…) are accomplished through PolicyKit wrappers.
Privacy: One of the latest focuses of GNOME development is
improving privacy,
and work is being done to make it easy to run GNOME applications in isolated
containers, integrate Tor seamlessly in the desktop experience, better disk
encryption support and other features that should make GNOME a more secure
desktop environment for end users.
Popularity: One of the metrics discussed by the tasksel
change proponents mentioned popcon
numbers. 8 months after the desktop change,
Xfce does not seem to have made a dent on install numbers.
The Debian GNOME team doesn’t feel popcon’s data is any better than a
random online poll though, as it’s an opt-in service which the vast majority
of users don’t enable.
systemd embracing: One of the reasons to switch to Xfce
was that it didn’t depend on systemd. But now that systemd is the default, that
shouldn’t be a problem. Also given ConsoleKit is deprecated and dead upstream,
KDE and Xfce are switching or are planning to switch to systemd/logind.
Adaptation: Debian forced a big desktop change with the
wheezy release, switching from the traditional GNOME 2.x to the new GNOME Shell
environment. Switching again would mean more adaptation for uses when they’ve
had two years to experience GNOME 3.4. Furthermore, GNOME 3.12 means two years
of improvements and polishing to GNOME 3.4, which should help with some of the
rough edges found in the GNOME release shipped with wheezy.
Administration: GNOME is easy to administrate. All the
default settings can be defined by administrators, and mandatory settings can
be forced to users, which is required in some companies and administrations;
Xfce cannot do that. The close integration with freedesktop components
(systemd, NM, PulseAudio…) also gives access to specific and useful
administration tools.
In short, we think defaulting to GNOME is the best option for the Debian
release, and in contrast, shipping Xfce as the default desktop could mean
delivering a desktop experience that has some incomplete or rough edges, and
not on par with Debian quality standards for a stable release. We believe
tasksel should again revert the change and be uploaded as soon as possible, in
order to get people testing images with GNOME the sooner the better, with the
freeze only two months away.
We would also like that in the future, changes of
this nature will not be announced in a git commit log, but widely discussed in
debian-project and the other usual development/decision channels, like the
change of init system happened recently. We will, whichever the final decision
is, continue to package GNOME with great care to ensure our users get the best
possible desktop experience Debian can offer.