Chapter 7. GUI System
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Chapter 7. GUI System

Table of Contents

7.1. GUI desktop environment
7.2. GUI communication protocol
7.3. GUI infrastructure
7.4. GUI applications
7.5. Fonts
7.5.1. Basic fonts
7.5.2. Font rasterization
7.6. Sandbox
7.7. Remote desktop
7.8. X server connection
7.8.1. X server local connection
7.8.2. X server remote connection
7.8.3. X server chroot connection
7.9. Clipboard

7.1. GUI desktop environment

There are several choices for the full featured GUI desktop environment on the Debian system.

Table 7.1. List of desktop environment

task package popcon size description
task-gnome-desktop I:181 9 GNOME desktop environment
task-xfce-desktop I:102 9 Xfce desktop environment
task-kde-desktop I:66 6 KDE Plasma desktop environment
task-mate-desktop I:48 9 MATE desktop environment
task-cinnamon-desktop I:37 9 Cinnamon desktop environment
task-lxde-desktop I:33 9 LXDE desktop environment
task-lxqt-desktop I:15 9 LXQt desktop environment
task-gnome-flashback-desktop I:7 6 GNOME Flashback desktop environment

[Tip] Tip

Dependency packages selected by a task metapackage may be out of sync with the latest package transition state under the Debian unstable/testing environment. For task-gnome-desktop, you may need to adjust package selections as follows:

  • Start aptitude(8) as sudo aptitude -u.

  • Move cursor to "Tasks" and press "Enter".

  • Move cursor to "End-user" press "Enter".

  • Move cursor to "GNOME" press "Enter".

  • Move cursor to task-gnome-desktop and press "Enter".

  • Move cursor to "Depends" and press "m" (manually selected).

  • Move cursor to "Recommends" and press "m" (manually selected).

  • Move cursor to "task-gnome-desktop and press "-". (drop)

  • Adjust selected packages while dropping problematic ones causing package conflicts.

  • Press "g" to start install.

This chapter will focus mostly on the default desktop environment of Debian: task-gnome-desktop offering GNOME on wayland.

7.2. GUI communication protocol

GUI communication protocol used on the GNOME desktop can be:

Please check freedesktop.org site for how Wayland architecture is different from X Window architecture.

From user's perspective, differences can be colloquially summarized as:

  • Wayland is a same-host GUI communication protocol: new, simpler, faster, no setuid root binary

  • X Window is a network-capable GUI communication protocol: traditional, complex, slower, setuid root binary

For applications using Wayland protocol, the access to their display contents from a remote host is supported by the VNC or RDP. See Section 7.7, “Remote desktop”

Modern X servers have the MIT Shared Memory Extension and communicate with their local X clients using the local shared memory. This bypasses the network transparent Xlib interprocess communication channel and gains performance. This situation was the background of creating Wayland as a local-only GUI communication protocol.

Using the xeyes program started from the GNOME terminal, you can check GUI communication protocol used by each GUI application.

 $ xeyes

  • If the mouse cursor is on an application such as "GNOME terminal" which uses Wayland display server protocol, eyes don't move with the mouse cursor.

  • If the mouse cursor is on an application such as "xterm" which uses X Window System core protocol, eyes move with the mouse cursor exposing not-so-isolated nature of X Window architecture.

As of April 2021, many popular GUI applications such as GNOME and LibreOffice (LO) applications have been migrated to the Wayland display server protocol. I see xterm, gitk, chromium, firefox, gimp, dia, and KDE applications still use X Window System core protocol.

[Note] Note

For both the xwayland on Wayland or the native X Window System, the old X server configuration file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" shouldn't exist on the system. The graphics and input devices are now configured by the kernel with DRM, KMS, and udev. The native X server has been rewritten to use them. See "modedb default video mode support" in the Linux kernel documentation.

7.3. GUI infrastructure

Here are notable GUI infrastructure packages for the GNOME on Wayland environment.

Table 7.2. List of notable GUI infrastructure packages

package popcon package size description
mutter V:4, I:140 216 GNOME's mutter window manager [auto]
xwayland V:152, I:246 2313 An X server running on top of wayland [auto]
gnome-remote-desktop V:55, I:108 540 Remote desktop daemon for GNOME using PipeWire [auto]
gnome-tweaks V:18, I:197 1277 Advanced configuration settings for GNOME

Here, "[auto]" means that these packages are automatically installed when task-gnome-desktop is installed.

[Tip] Tip

gnome-tweaks is the indispensable configuration utility. For example:

  • You can force "Over-Amplification" of sound volume from "General".

  • You can force "Caps" to become "Esc" from "Keyboard & Mouse" -> "Keyboard" -> "Additional Layout Option".

7.4. GUI applications

Many useful GUI applications are available on Debian now. Installing software packages such as scribus (KDE) on GNOME desktop environment are quite acceptable since corresponding functionality is not available under GNOME desktop environment. But installing too many packages with duplicated functionalities may clutter your system.

Here is a list of GUI applications which caught my eyes.

Table 7.3. List of notable GUI applications

package popcon package size type description
evolution V:31, I:236 493 GNOME Personal information Management (groupware and email)
thunderbird V:50, I:130 202238 GTK Email client (Mozilla Thunderbird)
kontact V:1, I:14 2203 KDE Personal information Management (groupware and email)
libreoffice-writer V:153, I:433 37611 LO word processor
abiword V:1, I:11 5133 GNOME word processor
calligrawords V:0, I:7 5893 KDE word processor
scribus V:2, I:22 30523 KDE desktop publishing editor to edit PDF files
glabels V:0, I:4 1327 GNOME label editor
libreoffice-calc V:148, I:430 30127 LO spreadsheet
gnumeric V:5, I:19 10084 GNOME spreadsheet
calligrasheets V:0, I:5 11326 KDE spreadsheet
libreoffice-impress V:118, I:426 9248 LO presentation
calligrastage V:0, I:5 5198 KDE presentation
libreoffice-base V:78, I:219 6047 LO database management
kexi V:0, I:2 7118 KDE database management
libreoffice-draw V:119, I:427 13442 LO vector graphics editor (draw)
inkscape V:35, I:167 87324 GNOME vector graphics editor (draw)
karbon V:0, I:6 3593 KDE vector graphics editor (draw)
dia V:3, I:28 3620 GTK flowchart and diagram editor
gimp V:61, I:300 19827 GTK bitmap graphics editor (paint)
shotwell V:17, I:237 6402 GTK digital photo organizer
digikam V:2, I:12 2921 KDE digital photo organizer
darktable V:5, I:16 26575 GTK lighttable and darkroom for photographers
planner V:0, I:4 1146 GNOME project management
calligraplan V:0, I:1 18517 KDE project management
gnucash V:3, I:10 32394 GNOME personal accounting
homebank V:0, I:2 1114 GTK personal accounting
lilypond V:1, I:8 7363 - music typesetter
kmymoney V:0, I:2 12850 KDE personal accounting
librecad V:2, I:16 8309 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (2D)
freecad I:18 59 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (3D)
kicad V:2, I:14 193841 GTK electronic schematic and PCB design software
xsane V:16, I:161 2346 GTK scanner frontend
libreoffice-math V:104, I:430 2298 LO mathematical equation/formula editor
calibre V:9, I:33 57919 KDE e-book converter and library management
fbreader V:1, I:13 2631 GTK e-book reader
evince V:107, I:323 978 GNOME document(pdf) viewer
okular V:42, I:114 15376 KDE document(pdf) viewer
x11-apps V:29, I:461 2437 pure X-app xeyes(1), etc.
x11-utils V:169, I:581 712 pure X-app xev(1), xwininfo(1)etc.

7.5. Fonts

Many useful scalable fonts are available for users on Debian. User's concern is how to avoid redundancy and how to configure parts of installed fonts to be disabled. Otherwise, useless font choices may clutter your GUI application menus.

Debian system uses FreeType 2.0 library to rasterise many scalable font formats for screen and print:

The following table is compiled in the hope to help users to chose appropriate scalable fonts with clear understanding of the metric compatibility and the glyph coverage. Most fonts cover all Latin fonts, Greek, and Cyril character glyphs. The final choice of activated fonts can also be affected by your aesthetics. These fonts can be used for the screen display or for the paper printing.

Table 7.4. List of notable TrueType and OpenType fonts

package popcon size sans serif mono note on font
fonts-cantarell V:103, I:296 572 59 - - Cantarell (GNOME 3, display)
fonts-noto I:134 35 61 63 40 Noto fonts (Google, multi-lingual with CJK)
fonts-dejavu I:449 39 58 68 40 DejaVu (GNOME 2, MCM:Verdana, extended Bitstream Vera)
fonts-liberation2 V:107, I:371 4290 56 60 40 Liberation fonts for LibreOffice (Red Hat, MCMATC)
fonts-croscore V:17, I:46 5278 56 60 40 Chrome OS: Arimo, Tinos and Cousine (Google, MCMATC)
fonts-crosextra-carlito V:24, I:214 2732 57 - - Chrome OS: Carlito (Google, MCM:Calibri )
fonts-crosextra-caladea I:212 258 - 55 - Chrome OS: Caladea (Google, MCM:Cambria ) (Latin only )
fonts-freefont-ttf V:63, I:247 6656 57 59 40 GNU FreeFont (extended URW Nimbus)
fonts-quicksand I:390 392 56 - - Debian task-desktop, Quicksand (display, Latin only)
fonts-hack V:17, I:94 2508 - - 40 P A typeface designed for source code Hack (Facebook)
fonts-sil-gentiumplus I:37 13568 - 54 - Gentium SIL
fonts-sil-charis V:3, I:22 6406 - 59 - Charis SIL
fonts-urw-base35 V:112, I:295 11095 56 60 40 URW Nimbus (Sans, Roman No. 9 L, Mono L, MCAHTC)
fonts-ubuntu V:2, I:5 4339 58 - 33 P Ubuntu fonts (display)
fonts-terminus V:0, I:2 452 - - 33 Cool retro terminal fonts
ttf-mscorefonts-installer V:1, I:59 92 56? 60 40 Downloader of Microsoft non-free fonts (see below)

Here:

  • "MCM" stands for "metric compatible with fonts provided by Microsoft"

  • "MCMATC" stands for "metric compatible with fonts provided by Microsoft: Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New"

  • "MCAHTC" stands for "metric compatible with fonts provided by Adobe: Helvetica, Times, Courier"

  • Numbers in font type columns stands for the rough relative "M" width for the same point size font.

  • "P" in mono font type columns stands for its usability for programming having clearly distinguishable "0"/"O" and "1"/"I"/"l".

  • The ttf-mscorefonts-installer package downloads Microsoft's "Core fonts for the Web" and installs Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, Verdana, ... . These installed font data are non-free data.

Many free Latin fonts have their lineage traced to URW Nimbus family or Bitstream Vera.

[Tip] Tip

If your locale needs fonts not covered well by the above fonts, please use aptitude to check under task packages listed under "Tasks" -> "Localization". The font packages listed as "Depends:" or "Recommends:" in the localization task packages are the primary candidates.

Debian uses FreeType to rasterize fonts. Its font choice infrastructure is provided by the Fontconfig font configuration library.

Table 7.5. List of notable font environment and related packages

package popcon size description
libfreetype6 V:476, I:996 882 FreeType font rasterization library
libfontconfig1 V:479, I:861 535 Fontconfig font configuration library
fontconfig V:376, I:747 623 fc-*: CLI commands for Fontconfig
font-manager V:2, I:9 1066 Font Manager: GUI command for Fontconfig
nautilus-font-manager V:0, I:0 61 Nautilus extension for Font Manager

[Tip] Tip

Some font packages such as fonts-noto* install too many fonts. You may also want to keep some font packages installed but disabled under the normal use situation. The multiple glyphs are expected for some Unicode code points due to Han unification and unwanted gliphs may be chosen by the unconfigured Fontconfig library. One of the most annoying case is "U+3001 IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA" and "U+3002 IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP" among CJK countries. You can avoid this problematic situation easily by configuring font availability using Font Manager GUI (font-manager).

You can list font configuration state from the command line, too.

  • "fc-match(1)" for fontconfig font default

  • "fc-list(1)" for available fontconfig fonts

You can configure font configuration state from the text editor but this is non-trivial. See fonts.conf(5).

7.6. Sandbox

Many mostly GUI applications on Linux are available in binary formats from non-Debian sources.

[Warning] Warning

Binaries from these sites may include proprietary non-free software packages.

There is some raison d'être for these binary format distributions for Free Software aficionados using Debian since these can accommodate clean set of libraries used for each application by the respective upstream developer independent of the ones provided by Debian.

The inherent risk of running external binaries can be reduced by using the sandbox environment which leverages modern Linux security features (see Section 4.7.4, “Linux security features”).

  • For binaries from AppImage and some upstream sites, run them in firejail with manual configuration.

  • For binaries from FLATHUB, run them in Flatpak . (No manual configuration required.)

  • For binaries from snapcraft, run them in Snap . (No manual configuration required. Compatible with daemon programs.)

The xdg-desktop-portal package provides a standardized API to common desktop features. See xdg-desktop-portal (flatpak) and xdg-desktop-portal (snap)

Table 7.6. List of notable sandbox environment and related packages

package popcon size description
flatpak V:36, I:40 6764 Flatpak application deployment framework for desktop apps
gnome-software-plugin-flatpak V:9, I:16 203 Flatpak support for GNOME Software
snapd V:55, I:63 54883 Daemon and tooling that enable snap packages
gnome-software-plugin-snap V:1, I:2 106 Snap support for GNOME Software
xdg-desktop-portal V:191, I:294 1503 desktop integration portal for Flatpak and Snap
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk V:138, I:292 682 xdg-desktop-portal backend for gtk (GNOME)
xdg-desktop-portal-kde V:3, I:5 949 xdg-desktop-portal backend for Qt (KDE)
xdg-desktop-portal-wlr V:0, I:1 107 xdg-desktop-portal backend for wlroots (Wayland)
firejail V:1, I:5 1634 a SUID security sandbox program firejail for use with AppImage

This sandbox environment technology is very much like apps on smart phone OS where apps are executed under controlled resource accesses.

Some large GUI applications such as web browsers on Debian also use sandbox environment technology internally to make them more secure.

7.7. Remote desktop

Table 7.7. List of notable remote access server

Access to the desktop and applications which use Wayland protocol and run on the remote host is supported by the GNOME Remote Desktop on the remote host through VNC or RDP to the local client.

Access to the desktop capabilities of all QEMU virtual machines is supported by the SPICE (the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) protocol.

package popcon size protocols description
gnome-remote-desktop V:55, I:108 540 RDP, RFB (VNC) GNOME Remote Desktop server
vinagre V:6, I:154 4249 RDP, RFB (VNC), SPICE, SSH Vinagre: GNOME remote desktop client
remmina V:13, I:60 897 RDP, RFB (VNC), SPICE, SSH, ... Remmina: GTK remote desktop client
krdc V:2, I:19 3591 RDP, RFB (VNC) KRDC: KDE remote desktop client
guacd V:0, I:0 83 RDP, RFB (VNC), SSH / HTML5 Apache Guacamole: clientless remote desktop gateway (HTML5)
virt-viewer V:4, I:51 1554 RFB (VNC), SPICE Virtual Machine Manager's GUI display client of guest OS

7.8. X server connection

There are several ways to connect from an application on a remote host to the X server including xwayland on the local host.

Table 7.8. List of connection methods to the X server

package popcon size command description
openssh-server V:709, I:832 1806 sshd with option X11-forwarding SSH server (secure)
openssh-client V:828, I:997 5650 ssh -X SSH client (secure)
xauth V:159, I:951 86 xauth X authority file utility
x11-xserver-utils V:295, I:524 570 xhost server access control for X

Access to the local X server by the local applications which use X core protocol can be locally connected through a local UNIX domain socket. This can be authorized by the authority file holding access cookie. The authority file location is identified by the "$XAUTHORITY" environment variable and X display is identified by the "$DISPLAY" environment variable. Since these are normally set automatically, no special action is needed, e.g. "gitk" as the following.

username $ gitk
[Note] Note

For xwayland, XAUTHORITY holds value like "/run/user/1000/.mutter-Xwaylandauth.YVSU30".

Access to the local X server display from the remote applications which use X core protocol is supported by using the X11 forwarding feature.

This method can display the output from a remote X client as if it were locally connected through a local UNIX domain socket.

See Section 6.3, “The remote access server and utilities (SSH)” for SSH/SSHD.

[Warning] Warning

A remote TCP/IP to the X server is disabled by default on the Debian system for security reasons. Don't enable them by simply setting "xhost +" nor by enabling XDMCP connection, if you can avoid it.

Access to the X server by the applications which use X core protocol and run on the same host but in an environment such as chroot where the authority file is not accessible, can be authorized securely with xhost by using the User-based access, e.g. "gitk" as the following.

username $ xhost + si:localuser:root ; sudo chroot /path/to
# cd /src
# gitk
# exit
username $ xhost -

7.9. Clipboard

For clipping text to clipboard, see Section 1.4.4, “Mouse operations”.

For clipping graphics to clipboard, see Section 11.6, “Graphic data tools”.

Some CLI commands can manipulate character clipboard (PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD), too.

Table 7.9. List of programs related to manipulating character clipboard

package popcon package size target description
xsel V:9, I:42 59 X command line interface to X selections (clipboard)
xclip V:11, I:51 64 X command line interface to X selections (clipboard)
wl-clipboard V:0, I:2 129 Wayland wl-copy wl-paste: command line interface to Wayland clipboard
gpm V:11, I:15 548 Linux console a daemon that captures mouse events on Linux console

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