Hello everyone I just did a minimal Debian install, but all I have is the Debian desktop environment(it looks like just a shell)... I would like some sort of GUI, but I'm not sure what's it's called. Like I just want to have a background wallpaper, and right click so it shows all my software. I don't want the start is back, or whatever like it's called on Windows where there's a little bar on the bottom of the screen.. I'm assuming that's called the windows manager.. So for what I'm looking for do I need a Desktop environment or Display manager? Thanks in advanced!


ALSO secondary question: This is totally unrelated, but does anyone know why when I deleted a partition that contained my second OS (I was duel-booting) why I was then stuck in grub? I felt like there was a simple way out as I can always press escape and enter grub then reboot, and it would then go back into my OS, however this time I could not...

Install a desktop environment (Xfce, Gnome, KDE, etc) and that will include a window manager and a display manager, everything you need. The shell is not a desktop environment, it's just a shell. From the shell you can install whatever you like. For what you want, LXDE might be a good choice. There are other minimal DEs, and you should do some research on them. I'm not expert on most, I've been using Xfce for a very long time and haven't really investigated anything else.

Because you deleted the files that grub on the mbr needed to boot up the operating system.

When I downloaded Debian I checked the little box that said Debian desktop environment

Thanks man I'll look into how to avoid that then in the future

if that is really all you want, just install openbox. it will pull in the necessary dependencies.
then you have to set up your .xinitrc to start openbox, then you just enter "startx" on the command line.
there's of course some more manual work.

btw, you have your terms messed up.

the plank at the edge of the screen is called a panel.
the display manager manages your login and X session and your transition from command line to gui. in itself, it is pretty useless.
a window manager does just that - it manages windows. usually provides the three buttons on the top to minimize, maximize and close the window.

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Sweeet heck yeah thanks alot man for clearing that up, that's definitely what I'm looking for!

A lot of the DEs that you can install give you an option to remove taskbars (the bars at the bottom of the screen). But desktop environments are things like KDE, XFCE, LXDE, GNOME, etc. I'd say you should try out GNOME. If you remove all taskbars then a lot of times I think you might find yourself lost some times. But GNOME doesn't give any taskbars but it does allow you to manage all the windows you have open and things like that.

Although I have a wild suggestion that I haven't seen others mention. But I think you should try out a desktop environment called Blackbox. But please do a lot of research on it before trying it because I myself know very little about it, and I probably used it for like 20 minutes in a virtual machine.

I think that's the same one I used too, thanks alot for telling me that the name of it!

You might have used something called fluxbox, or openbox, or another one branched off of Blackbox. I don't really know the difference between the three. I've just installed Blackbox alongside Unity to try it out. So far so good!

blackbox still works reasonably well, but its development ceased about 10 years ago.
some things expected from a current window manager won't be available.
that said, it's still great.
fluxbox and openbox have both been developed from blackbox, and are both under active development.
of the 2, openbox is the most standards-compliant (freedesktop i think), but fluxbox will earn you more geek points

Also as I have started to use Blackbox I have realized that there is very little online help. You have to be willing to look at man pages and things like that if you're going to survive. Also a lot of things are not the same as they would be in Windows and even things like Ubuntu. You have to set up a lot of stuff. You're going to have to figure out things like how to set a wallpaper to how to set up audio control. If you want a really useful guide then check this link out.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=125084

This post will show you how to do a lot of the things you'll need to know. But if you decide to use it then good luck and enjoy!

EDIT: I don't know if you can use answers from things like Fluxbox to help you. I haven't tried to see if answers online about Fluxbox or Openbox would work for Blackbox.

blackbox has been dead for 10 years!
no surprise there.
it's great that it still works.
everything you need to know about it (incl. further links) is here: http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/
.lol.


not really. or only in a very limited sense; a lot of extra work to filter out what applies to blackbox.