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After having installed Devuan Chimaera for the first time about 2 months ago on a separate partition, I installed it (with the same netinst-iso) to finally replace Debian Bullseye.
The installation process itself went smoothly.
However, this time I didn't choose any DE. So I had to deselect xfce4 as the default option.
When given the option to choose a display manager, I chose lightdm over the default Slim (which I was having trouble with during the previous test-install; see here).
When I rebooted, I was surprised to find that my choices had been ignored.
Not only had Slim been installed (I noticed that right away when not having a greeter again (as reported in the thread under the link above).
I also had a full installation of xfce4 just as if I had selected it during the installation process.
Both points are not troubling me too much as I simply replaced Slim with lightdm again.
And I was eventually going for xfce4 anyway.
That was with the automatic install btw.
Another thing is that I chose expert install on my first attempt but aborted due to the following reason:
When being in the partitioning window, I was presented with only 4 (or 5) choices for a filesystem (ext2 being one of them, but neither ext3 nor ext4).
As I wanted ext4 for / again, I aborted and chose automatic install where it was available (along with a lot more choices).
Just wanted to let developers know that there may be a glitch in the installation process (at least in my configuration).
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I guess your experience is explainable. If you want to install a DE manually, you must disable the DE choice in the installer and XFCE which is the default. Then you are not getting asked which DM to install, and that DM will not pull the default DE as dependency as it happened to you. I do all my installs nowadays by just using the netinstall and to install just the basic system utilities. Then I manually install xorg, lightdm and mate or cinnamon w/o install-recommends and build the system as I like it.
The second problem appears when you skip loading some basic options during expert install. Then you are not getting the advanced file systems, just the very basic ones.
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Another thing is that I chose expert install on my first attempt but aborted due to the following reason:
When being in the partitioning window, I was presented with only 4 (or 5) choices for a filesystem (ext2 being one of them, but neither ext3 nor ext4).
As I wanted ext4 for / again, I aborted and chose automatic install where it was available (along with a lot more choices).Just wanted to let developers know that there may be a glitch in the installation process (at least in my configuration).
I fell over the same threshold.
I wouldn't call it a glitch.
The expert install is not really an expert install, as it is not complete in all needed options.
The devil, you know, is better than the angel, you don't know. by a British Citizen, I don't know too good.
One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. By Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN, Economy. Line 236 (Gutenberg text Version)
broken by design :
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=958390
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The expert installation is meant for people who know what they are doing. If you skip the menu option "Load installer components from installation media" you will get the minimum options for file systems. You do not need to tick one of the additional options, but when you abort that topic the required support for advanced file systems are not getting loaded.
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Perhaps the expert installer should have a note by it saying "Don't choose this for your first installation". Or other words to that effect.
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