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:179 9 GNOME desktop environment
task-xfce-desktop I:97 9 Xfce desktop environment
task-kde-desktop I:64 6 KDE Plasma desktop environment
task-mate-desktop I:44 9 MATE desktop environment
task-cinnamon-desktop I:36 9 Cinnamon desktop environment
task-lxde-desktop I:30 9 LXDE desktop environment
task-lxqt-desktop I:16 9 LXQt desktop environment
task-gnome-flashback-desktop I:10 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:3, I:99 199 GNOME's mutter window manager [auto]
xwayland V:176, I:240 2336 An X server running on top of wayland [auto]
gnome-remote-desktop V:62, I:146 1036 Remote desktop daemon for GNOME using PipeWire [auto]
gnome-tweaks V:16, I:200 1202 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:28, I:226 470 GNOME Personal information Management (groupware and email)
thunderbird V:56, I:123 193432 GTK Email client (Mozilla Thunderbird)
kontact V:1, I:12 2195 KDE Personal information Management (groupware and email)
libreoffice-writer V:122, I:414 38212 LO word processor
abiword V:1, I:9 3467 GNOME word processor
calligrawords V:0, I:6 5836 KDE word processor
scribus V:1, I:20 30234 KDE desktop publishing editor to edit PDF files
glabels V:0, I:4 1338 GNOME label editor
libreoffice-calc V:118, I:410 30647 LO spreadsheet
gnumeric V:4, I:18 10003 GNOME spreadsheet
calligrasheets V:0, I:5 11244 KDE spreadsheet
libreoffice-impress V:83, I:407 9098 LO presentation
calligrastage V:0, I:4 5142 KDE presentation
libreoffice-base V:46, I:171 5933 LO database management
kexi V:0, I:1 7118 KDE database management
libreoffice-draw V:84, I:408 13442 LO vector graphics editor (draw)
inkscape V:17, I:147 99316 GNOME vector graphics editor (draw)
karbon V:0, I:5 3581 KDE vector graphics editor (draw)
dia V:2, I:25 3908 GTK flowchart and diagram editor
gimp V:53, I:272 19767 GTK bitmap graphics editor (paint)
shotwell V:15, I:233 6548 GTK digital photo organizer
digikam V:2, I:11 265 KDE digital photo organizer
darktable V:4, I:14 29882 GTK lighttable and darkroom for photographers
planner V:0, I:3 1458 GNOME project management
calligraplan V:0, I:1 19013 KDE project management
gnucash V:2, I:9 32579 GNOME personal accounting
homebank V:0, I:2 1232 GTK personal accounting
lilypond V:1, I:8 6424 - music typesetter
kmymoney V:0, I:2 13341 KDE personal accounting
librecad V:1, I:16 8798 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (2D)
freecad I:16 53 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (3D)
kicad V:2, I:14 196806 GTK electronic schematic and PCB design software
xsane V:13, I:148 2339 GTK scanner frontend
libreoffice-math V:67, I:411 2234 LO mathematical equation/formula editor
calibre V:8, I:30 62725 KDE e-book converter and library management
fbreader V:1, I:11 2631 GTK e-book reader
evince V:96, I:306 974 GNOME document(pdf) viewer
okular V:35, I:109 17297 KDE document(pdf) viewer
x11-apps V:26, I:440 2476 pure X-app xeyes(1), etc.
x11-utils V:169, I:556 712 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:124, I:288 572 59 - - Cantarell (GNOME 3, display)
fonts-noto I:130 35 61 63 40 Noto fonts (Google, multi-lingual with CJK)
fonts-dejavu I:422 39 58 68 40 DejaVu (GNOME 2, MCM:Verdana, extended Bitstream Vera)
fonts-liberation2 V:114, I:378 4290 56 60 40 Liberation fonts for LibreOffice (Red Hat, MCMATC)
fonts-croscore V:20, I:44 5278 56 60 40 Chrome OS: Arimo, Tinos and Cousine (Google, MCMATC)
fonts-crosextra-carlito V:23, I:172 2728 57 - - Chrome OS: Carlito (Google, MCM:Calibri )
fonts-crosextra-caladea I:171 347 - 55 - Chrome OS: Caladea (Google, MCM:Cambria ) (Latin only )
fonts-freefont-ttf V:64, I:226 6656 57 59 40 GNU FreeFont (extended URW Nimbus)
fonts-quicksand I:391 392 56 - - Debian task-desktop, Quicksand (display, Latin only)
fonts-hack V:20, I:95 2508 - - 40 P A typeface designed for source code Hack (Facebook)
fonts-sil-gentiumplus I:35 13568 - 54 - Gentium SIL
fonts-sil-charis I:26 6406 - 59 - Charis SIL
fonts-urw-base35 V:127, I:370 15558 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:2 453 - - 33 Cool retro terminal fonts
ttf-mscorefonts-installer V:1, I:54 85 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:527, I:996 890 FreeType font rasterization library
libfontconfig1 V:523, I:853 579 Fontconfig font configuration library
fontconfig V:409, I:721 617 fc-*: CLI commands for Fontconfig
font-manager V:2, I:8 1062 Font Manager: GUI command for Fontconfig
nautilus-font-manager V:0, I:0 37 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:41, I:44 7350 Flatpak application deployment framework for desktop apps
gnome-software-plugin-flatpak V:10, I:17 227 Flatpak support for GNOME Software
snapd V:61, I:65 59918 Daemon and tooling that enable snap packages
gnome-software-plugin-snap V:1, I:2 112 Snap support for GNOME Software
xdg-desktop-portal V:229, I:311 1773 desktop integration portal for Flatpak and Snap
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk V:195, I:309 746 xdg-desktop-portal backend for gtk (GNOME)
xdg-desktop-portal-kde V:7, I:10 1300 xdg-desktop-portal backend for Qt (KDE)
xdg-desktop-portal-wlr V:0, I:1 123 xdg-desktop-portal backend for wlroots (Wayland)
firejail V:1, I:5 1771 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:62, I:146 1036 RDP, RFB (VNC) GNOME Remote Desktop server
vinagre V:4, I:110 4249 RDP, RFB (VNC), SPICE, SSH Vinagre: GNOME remote desktop client
remmina V:12, I:63 897 RDP, RFB (VNC), SPICE, SSH, ... Remmina: GTK remote desktop client
krdc V:1, I:17 3882 RDP, RFB (VNC) KRDC: KDE remote desktop client
guacd V:0, I:0 80 RDP, RFB (VNC), SSH / HTML5 Apache Guacamole: clientless remote desktop gateway (HTML5)
virt-viewer V:4, I:51 1316 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:740, I:841 1867 sshd with option X11-forwarding SSH server (secure)
openssh-client V:856, I:997 5609 ssh -X SSH client (secure)
xauth V:155, I:952 81 xauth X authority file utility
x11-xserver-utils V:285, I:506 576 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.

  • Open an gnome-terminal on the local host.

  • Run ssh(1) with -X option to establish a connection with the remote site as the following.

    localname @ localhost $ ssh -q -X loginname@remotehost.domain
Password:

  • Run an X application command, e.g. "gitk", on the remote site as the following.

    loginname @ remotehost $ gitk

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:8, I:40 59 X command line interface to X selections (clipboard)
xclip V:10, I:53 64 X command line interface to X selections (clipboard)
wl-clipboard V:1, I:5 141 Wayland wl-copy wl-paste: command line interface to Wayland clipboard
gpm V:11, I:14 521 Linux console a daemon that captures mouse events on Linux console

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