LXQt was probably the last desktop to be installed, so the alternatives system set it as the default, thus replacing any previous default settings. That's normal behavior of the alternatives system. You can change the default desktop by running update-alternatives --config x-session-manager and if needed, you can change the default window manager with update-alternatives --config x-window-manager

If you only install one desktop environment, you get that desktop's default window manager automatically. If you have multiple window managers installed, the desktop software has the logic coded into it to ask you if the additional window manager is there because you want to use it.

Installiing multiple desktop environments used to be a simple matter. But that doesn't seem to be the case now. It would work better if they were installed one at a time, so any conflicts might be more apparent.

Look in /var/log/installer/syslog for task-xfce-desktop task-cinnamon-desktop and task-lxqt-desktop to see which were checked at the tasksel window in the installer.

I got no icons on the desktop in my cinnamon install. If I go into preferences and set the desktop to show those items, their names show correctly.

Look inside those text files to see what's there. If they are actual .desktop files, they should look similar to the files in /usr/share/applications. Are they functional when you click on them?

It sounds like lxqt is coded in such a way that it will use just about any window manager. It can recognize a few if they are installed, and ask you which one to use. I recall that lxde lets you easily change the window manager, and I recall long ago being given a choice of wm in gnome 2.x (sawtooth or metacity?).

This is a good thing. It means the software was written to be interoperable with lots of different things. In such cases, the user can usually ignore the choices and just press enter to get a sane default.

The current chimaera installer isos (and live isos) are alpha level. They should work essentially the same as previous installer isos. That they don't is no surprise. The default desktop is supposed to be xfce, and if you select something else, you should get what you select.

What boxes did you check/uncheck at the tasksel window, and did you install with or without a network mirror?

Here is my procedure for a debootstrap install. See 'man debootstrap' for other options.

chroot-dir is the directory where you want to do the debootstrap install. If you mount a separate volume for that, then chroot-dir is the mountpoint. Call it whatever you want.

debootstrap --arch amd64 chimaera chroot-dir http://deb.devuan.org/merged

# Copy files to the new system. Example:
cp /boot/grub/splash.png chroot-dir/boot/grub/

Mount some things and chroot into the new system to make additions and changes.

mount --bind /proc chroot-dir/proc
mount --bind /sys chroot-dir/sys
mount --bind /dev chroot-dir/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts chroot-dir/dev/pts

chroot /chroot-dir

Install kernel and other packages
Install grub or other bootloader  (run grub-install and update-grub)
Edit configs
Create root password
Create user

Leave the chroot:

exit

Unmount stuff:

umount -l chroot-dir/dev/pts
umount -l chroot-dir/dev/
umount -l chroot-dir/sys
umount -l chroot-dir/proc

# And if it's a separate volume:
umount -l chroot-dir

Sorry, I got distracted and forgot about this one. I didn't see anything odd with the usual suspects (policykit, et. al.) but I also don't know exactly where the break is between when stuff worked and when it didn't. I'm also not familiar with some of the apt options you used, so I don't know if that caused anything weird to happen.

Network setup in xfce is now handled by network-manager. If you want to use /etc/network/interfaces, you should disable or remove network-manager, or they will fight with each other.

I haven't tried the latest installers with a wireless connection yet, but with earlier ones, I had trouble if the wireless password had special characters in it. If I changed it to all lower case, the password worked in the installer. Special characters work correctly in the installed system.

I've seen a few cases where Video DownloadHelper in firefox shows me the video file in several formats, but only one of the files will play both video and audio.

@andyprough:

How do you run linux on a computer with only 64k RAM???

There's no security repo for the Testing branch. As long as Chimaera is in testing, any security updates will filter down from Ceres, our unstable branch. Unstable means the versions can change quickly.

It takes a week for a version to move from Unstable to Testing. If you want to selectively get updates sooner than that, you can add a line for ceres to your sources.list and pin ceres to a lower priority, so that you can pick and choose what to take.

I'm not sure what will happen when Debian Bullseye goes stable. We might start tracking the security updates at that time.

What do "fixed" and "not affected" mean? I expect "not affected" to mean "doesn't need to be fixed" rather than "we fixed it".