In this post, I’ll share my experience attempting to install Debian 13 “Trixie” with a minimal Gnome setup.
For years, I used Pop!_OS on my work PC.
At home, I had already switched to BigLinux.
The timing for this change was perfect, as my Pop!_OS installation didn’t handle an upgrade attempt (from version 20.04 to 22.04) very well.
After that, I headed to the Debian website and downloaded the netinst image.
Installing Debian 13 Trixie with Minimal Gnome
The installation process is very similar to previous Debian versions.
I won’t go into detail about partitioning, but I followed my usual setup:
Two partitions: a Root partition and a Home partition.
One positive highlight of the installation was the network detection—it felt significantly faster in Trixie!
Since my goal was to install as few packages as possible (only the essentials for my work), I only selected the “standard system utilities” option during the task selection.
Installing the Desktop Environment
Once the installation was finished and I logged into the terminal, I ran:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade Just to be safe, right? Since it was a fresh install, everything was already up to date.
To install the minimal Gnome environment, I used the following command:
sudo apt install gnome-shell gnome-terminal network-manager network-manager-gnome gnome-software gnome-software-plugin-flatpak gnome-tweaks flatpakAfter the packages were installed, I rebooted the machine, and it booted straight into the graphical environment.
It was great to see that my Flatpak apps were already there, thanks to my existing Home partition settings.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing…
My PC started freezing, forcing me to perform hard reboots using the power button.
This is exactly why I called this an “adventure” with the new Debian!
Issues and Downgrading (for now)
My work PC is quite old: an Intel Core i3-2120 with 16GB DDR3 RAM and a 120GB SSD.
However, I believe the real culprit was my GPU—an ancient Nvidia GT 210.
This old GPU serves my purpose of running dual monitors, and despite its age, it still performs better than the integrated graphics on a 2nd or 3rd gen i3.
I tried several things to fix the freezing, but none worked:
- Switched from Wayland to Xorg.
- Disabled all Gnome visual effects.
- Installed the firmware-misc-nonfree package.
I didn’t even consider switching to XFCE or trying to install the legacy Nvidia 340 driver.
Since Debian 13 comes with a much newer kernel (6.12), I didn’t want to deal with the headache of trying to compile the 340 driver on it.
Instead, I downloaded Debian 12 (Bookworm) and followed the same steps to get a minimal Gnome setup. So far, the system is very stable with no freezes.
By the way, I installed Gnome-Boxes and activated bridge mode on it!
In the next post, I’ll detail my post-installation steps to keep the system optimized.
See you then!