Debian Switches Back To GNOME From Xfce

Debian will no longer be defaulting to the Xfce desktop but they have returned to using the GNOME desktop as the default.

Back in August it was reported that Debian was defaulting to Xfce rather than GNOME with the Tasksel Git. The reason for changing the recommended desktop came down to Xfce being lighter than GNOME so that the Xfce desktop could fit entirely on the first Debian CD where as GNOME fails in this regard.

Well, only a few months later and still ahead of the Debian 7.0 release, GNOME is back as the Tasksel default. With a commit made at the end of October, it's simply described as, "again revert xfce default."

Xfce will remain available, but GNOME is back to being the default as "the desktop environment to install when the desktop task is selected." Not all Debian users will likely though that GNOME has now dropped its fallback mode requiring users to have a 3D-accelerated GPU driver or else you are forced to use LLVMpipe.

Separately, there's also word that Linus Torvalds has switched back to GNOME after just a short time ago switched to the KDE desktop.