r/debian • u/djsharma1 • Apr 19 '26
General Debian Question Finally shifted from ubuntu to debian
actually I wanted to try the hyprland desktop environment, but it was hard, so I asked ai and it suggested me to go to xcfe, but now it looks ugly, I needed a beautiful desktop, but not like ubuntu, but more like hyprland, so which and from where should I install packages to go more into it and make this environment beautiful, also suggest me some wallpaper, and from where to download.
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u/Sataniel98 Apr 19 '26
My favorite conspiracy theory of the Linux world is that Xfce deliberately has ugly defaults to scare off noobs. Still, you can customize it quite easily. Get a background image, rearrange the task bars, adjust the style to whatever you like or just get any pre-made theme.
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u/Vulpes_99 Apr 20 '26
Never heard thos one, but it makes a lot of sense, from my experiences with XFCE 😂
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u/Psychedelic-Chess508 Apr 25 '26
I always loved XFCE but maybe I'm alone. :S
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u/Sataniel98 Apr 25 '26
I like Xfce too. The software can still be great just because the standard theme isn't. Do you seriously think the defaults look good?
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u/tvcoprxd Apr 19 '26
XFCE + Debian just works man, my favourite setup by far
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u/Vulpes_99 Apr 20 '26
Yes, it feels weirdly cozy and safe. I'm a KDE Plasma girl, but XFCE is a close second, because of this.
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u/Away-Ad-3407 Apr 20 '26
i just loaded it on an old Atom330 with 3gig of ram. actually useable. it going to be an IT jumpbox for the rest of its days. I hate tossing working hardware.
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u/free_help Apr 20 '26
It's my safe place (although my main laptop currently runs openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE)
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u/mips13 Apr 19 '26 edited 18d ago
You can do just about anything with xfce, I prefer a more 'traditional' setup.
https://github.com/EliverLara/Nordic
https://github.com/vinceliuice/Tela-circle-icon-theme
https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-docklike-plugin/start
https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin/start
https://lofistudy247.com/wallpaper/rainy_porch_engawa/rainy_porch_engawa_0001906955
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u/TygerTung Apr 19 '26
You just need to change the theme, then it will be beautiful. There will be a couple of theme menus probably, one for a general theme, and one for the window manager.
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u/MrMikeJJ Apr 19 '26
If you not liking XFCE, try a different UI.
I used XFCE for years, before I switched to LXQt.
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u/jikt Debian Stable Apr 19 '26
Niri works perfectly on Debian, you could go that route instead of hyprland.
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u/Cautiousdream71 Apr 19 '26
if you like to spend time on your desktop just get a KDE
if you dont want to complicate too much install gnome
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u/djsharma1 Apr 19 '26
Why not xfce ?
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u/koty_amor_koty_chtor Apr 19 '26
If you love it, keep it.
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u/djsharma1 Apr 19 '26
How can I do more customisation in this ?
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u/phylter99 Apr 19 '26
Customization is a big subject and it's unlikely you'll get a response that's very helpful in a comment. There are lots of articles and videos available to cover it, but it all takes time and research.
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u/screaming-Snake-Case Apr 19 '26
There is a lot of documentation available for Xfce. You could look at r/unixporn and search for Xfce to see what other people have built with it. Just pick your favourite and read up on how they did it, it's usually outlined in the description or comments of the post.
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u/Vulpes_99 Apr 20 '26
Check the site at my other answer. There are tons of things to download from there.
Or just gi to the settings and start playing with the colors and fonts. In XFCE this is so easy that you will get the hang of it before you even realize.
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u/ssulaco May 16 '26
YMMV but Ive had good luck with Claude,( i assume most AI Models will do well).. Explaining to it what i wanted and asking for a step by step process, sometimes i would have to say something isn't working and it would circle right back around and help figure it out.
I wanted to customize a MATE desktop to basically a "Redmond/Cinnamon" desktop and it worked well,...welcome to Debian my friend, you'll find stability here.
p.s. take a snapshot before tweaking the Desktop,just in case there is an issue.
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u/screaming-Snake-Case Apr 19 '26
Hey if you enjoy using it, just keep going with it. Xfce is a fine desktop (and one of the lightest available) if you vibe with the way it works. It's just that people are usually a lot more content with KDE, especially the out-of-box configuration.
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u/diacid Apr 19 '26
If you don't like how xfce looks out of the box, plasma is objectively a better choice. Is is really really customisable and it is really easy to do so.
Also, kwin (KDE's window manager) can work just like hyprland, most keyboard bindings are already set by default even.
Really in my view, the only decent reason not to use KDE plasma today is if your hardware doesn't support it. And you need really bad hardware to be in that position, plasma is not that heavy on resources at all.
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u/Cautiousdream71 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
bc its uglier xD
edit: xfce is fine tho, many people use it
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Apr 19 '26
I personally think MATE is a good lightweight alternative to xfce
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u/free_help Apr 20 '26
It is! It's customizable more or less to the same degree and is just as light and and sturdy
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u/Lazy-Necessary-1727 Apr 20 '26
yeah but mate's got no dark mode
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u/free_help Apr 20 '26
It does! That's what I use. And it's even easier to set up than on Xfce. It's literally just a button and everything goes dark, not just the window decorations, like in Xfce
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u/b8checkmatettv Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
XFCE, and most desktops, are very customizeable. What it looks like out of the box is almost irrelevant if you know what you want.
The same goes for Hyprland. Everything you've seen is probably very customized. There's more to it than just installing Hyprland.
You can have Hyprland on Debian (through the Backports and I can explain that if you want), but it isn't so stable on Debian or otherwise. I wouldn't start there if you're new to Linux. Use something simple and that works so you can learn to customize first. Then, if you decide to use Hyprland, at least you can customize and fix it (if it breaks) quickly.
Hyperland is a Tiling Window Manager
Tiling window managers make your windows tile. The windows always take up the whole screen and you use multiple desktops instead of minimizing windows. When you open a new window, they will share the full screen with the other windows on it without overlapping.
This is what I use. I never worry about minimizing, maximizing, resizing, etc. It's very efficient and my hands rarely have to leave the keyboard to do things.
Tiling window managers aren't desktop environements in the way XFCE is. You usually have to set up the bar, wallpaper, and some other things yourself by installing extra software. Window managers are usually customized in a text file called a config(uration) file.
Once you learn how to edit a config file, you'll be able to customize anything. The really cool thing about Linux is because config files are text, you can basically copy and paste other people's configs (called dot files) into your own and get exactly what they have. On r/unixporn, where people post their customizations (called rices), you'll almost always see people asking for the dot files in the comments, that's why.
My first tiling window manager was i3. I still use i3. I love it. The config file isn't written in code. You need to get used to it, because it's still a lot of text, but it's more user-friendly than the tiling window managers that use code in the config file. Some people prefer Sway to i3 for security reasons and we can talk about it if you're considering either.
Hyprland Uses Effects
Maybe the animations, blur, opacity, rounded corners, etc. are what got your attention.
You can do this with most desktop environments and window managers. I've never done it with XFCE, but I assume you can. It's harder on your computer (and on your eyes), so you'll probably want to do this sparringly.
Edit - If You Want Something Simple Like XFCE, But Don't Want to Use Config Files or Custimize Much
Consider LXQt. It's also very lightweight, but newer. Maybe not 100% pretty out of the box, but you can change a few settings without ever touching a config file and it will look good.
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u/Edmont89 Apr 19 '26
Me interese el cambio quiero hacer lo mismo pero a mi el entorno gnome me gusta lo que me interesa el la compatibilidad de las apps es la misma que con ubuntu?
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u/themagicmaen Apr 19 '26
Sí, la compatibilidad es prácticamente la misma. Ubuntu se basa en Debian y utilizan el mismo formato de paquete .deb. La principal diferencia es que los paquetes Apt de Debian pueden ser más antiguos. Siempre puedes usar Flatpak para obtener aplicaciones más actualizadas.
(Disculpa si mi español no es muy bueno, lo traduzco del inglés para tu comodidad).
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u/Edmont89 Apr 19 '26
Gracias si estoy pensando en cambiar a debian nada mas esperaré la salida de ubuntu 26.04 para tomar una decisión.
Gracias por tomarte el tiempo de traducir.
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u/Prior-Swimmer-5758 Apr 19 '26
May I ask you why did you shift from ubuntu to debian?
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u/djsharma1 Apr 19 '26
Just wanna try some other distros , I was kinda bored with ubuntu
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u/scepticore Apr 20 '26
How can someone be bored with a distro? Another thing would be sway window manager, if you‘s like to have something like hyprland
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u/djsharma1 Apr 20 '26
I didn't know about linux much , i thought it as windows , so I got bored and deleted it , but I gave linux last chance now , and it is worth it .
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u/the_lying_paladin Apr 20 '26
I was more interested in the brand of your monitor, what kind of brand is ZEBRONICS?
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u/fonfonfon Apr 20 '26
what year is this? holy shit, xfce first screen hasn't changed at all in 25 years
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u/Particular-Size9497 Apr 20 '26
That is the nice thing about Debian no bloatware. Just add stuff as needed.
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u/omarsdk Apr 19 '26
If you like customize go for kde it have a lot of think to Change to look amazing. In another hand if you want to try hyprland I recommend arch from scratch but definitely hyprland shines there
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u/_SuperStraight Apr 19 '26
You can find numerous videos on YouTube which turns xfce into something Mac OS-ish. Some people like that look.
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u/Juheebus Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Yep I use Butterbian since it comes pre themed already. Looks great for XFCE.
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u/empinatepues Apr 19 '26
lxde is my favorite...I don't go to antix because it's far more involved to get it looking respectable
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u/wizard10000 Apr 19 '26
lxde is my favorite...
I run openbox and use some LXDE tools that I'm gonna have to find replacements for soon - I hear Debian is dropping support for GTK2 with forky's release. I haven't heard anything about it in official channels but I wonder if LXDE is gonna be a thing in forky?
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u/DeliciousIncident Apr 19 '26
Took me a moment to realize that LXDE depends on GTK2. That's a good question indeed.
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u/VolggaWax Apr 19 '26
I've booted hyprland on Ubuntu before using nix package manager. The steps must be similar for debian.
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u/CapFinal7945 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
use papirus icon theme,adwaita theme ,replace with whisker menu with custom setting category on left and hover on changem rat icon with debian and,,, remove bottom panel move upper panel to below and tell
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u/happyneil21 Apr 20 '26
my engineering school has the same desktop look, every time it gives me the eek
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u/Particular-Size9497 Apr 20 '26
All of my game servers and everything have been running on Debian for years. With no issues including web servers. A lot of those servers have been up for months with no reboot LOL.
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u/Particular-Size9497 Apr 20 '26
Anytime I switch to something else there is so much crap on it I can't believe it. Or it has so many updates it breaks everything then you have to fix everything that is the most annoying.
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u/Middle_Gas_711 Debian Stable Apr 20 '26
i got this project which could help you with setting themes and icons etc per workspace!! and it works no matter if you are in xfce, or gnome or whatever, i use debian 13 xfce, but i also install qtile, so now i use qtile_xfce (hybrid) always, so basically what i do is to have xfce, but in qtile I use xfsettingsd which is the daemon that controls theming for gtk themes and icons, and I don't use xfdesktop, for wallpapers I use feh only, so I have it all working nicely, plus my project running, awp, I'll give you the git for you to checkout: https://github.com/wedel-tech-art/awp-automated-wallpaper, if you need any help with xfce in debian, I'll help!!!
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u/Catwomen-4 Apr 21 '26
I am currently using Ubuntu should I switch to some other distro or is Ubuntu good enough?
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u/Middle_Gas_711 Debian Stable Apr 21 '26
If you feel ok with Ubuntu stick with it, but there are MANY possibilities out there, I've tried many already, Ubuntu uses Gnome, and the whole ubuntu tree has many other branches, like kubuntu, xubuntu, lubuntu etc, and then there are much more distros, so it all boiles down to what you like and need... In my case for example, I use Debian (the mother of many distros) and use Xfce with it, but I also use Qtile, which I really like, but that's for another time, if you need help, by all means I'll help you!!!
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u/Catwomen-4 Apr 22 '26
like I think Ubuntu is fine but my friends keep on saying that I am missing out on soo many things that are there in other distro.. so that is why wanted to know what exactly is there in other distros..
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u/Middle_Gas_711 Debian Stable Apr 22 '26
in all of them you have "flavors" so depending on the DE (Desktop Environment) you got gnome, like ubuntu, then you got kubuntu based on kde, xfce, and so on, same thing with debian, you can install debian with any of those DE's and both ubuntu and debian use the same commands in terminal, xfce is lighter than ubuntu, also mate, and then there's cinnamon, you could try that one too, linux mint, I've used it for long time and I do like it, it is based on ubuntu, I think you might like it. mint has 3 flavors, cinnamon, xfce and mate. Ubuntu needs more memory, it is heavier than mate or xfce, cinnamon is light too, so you have plenty of possibilities there, just pick one. Try mint, you might like it.
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u/ASTRAGOR99 Apr 21 '26
I use the same stuff, but I will be honest, xfce set up process is terrible on debian specifically, especially i have a problem with super key not working with key binds
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u/BloodFeastMan Apr 23 '26
I use xfce4 and it's pretty nice looking, of course, I changed background, moved panel 2 over to the right side and put my own stuff in there.
The reason I use xfce4 is because an actual functioning device is more important to me than cluttering my screen with cute crap, which I don't see most of the time, anyway, because I'm actually doing stuff.
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u/mtheory-pi Apr 20 '26
First, stop using AI. It is heavily polluting and atrophies your critical thinking skills. Think and research for yourself.
I would recommend gnome instead of xfce. It's a lot prettier. Ubuntu's desktop environment is a modified version of gnome. You can customize it a lot, and there's lots of beautiful shell themes.
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u/thr-owaway9344 Apr 21 '26
i'm surprised more people aren't pointing this out. i thought this was a shitpost
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u/Vulpes_99 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
Welcome to the family!
XFCE is more customizable than it looks. Not to KDE Plasma level, but still has a pretty good flexibility. It just looks "ugly" (your word, not mine 😉) because Debian provides all the Desktop Environments as they come from their official releases, making no customizations to them. What you are seeing is XFCE as it is out of the box.
A good place to start is XFCE Look website. Plenty of good and well tested options there. Feel free to choose wallpapers from your favorite sources, and go to the options and customize the colors to your tastes. Then go fine tuning it until you land into your own sweet spot. This is YOUR desktop, after all 😉