I installed only the base debian package and during installation I did not select any of GUI window manager, laptop, or system utilities.So basically I'm running debian from command line, now I want to set up a GUI just for desktop. For this I tried installing gnome-core byapt-get install gnome-coreBut is shows gnome-core as a 400MB archive, is the core package so big? I don't want any programs just the basic desktop GUI and nothing else. My internet speed is slow and I can't wait for hours together for installing gnome. Is there any other way to do it?To install only the core package for just desktop and nothing else.
Gnome-core on Debian
debian
Apt nowadays, fairly annoyingly, installs recommended packages by default. It presumably wants to pull a few dozens of packages. You may skip this behaviour once with the switch --no-install-recommends, or permanently by putting the following into /etc/apt/apt.conf:APT::Install-Recommends false;FWIW, I'm getting roughly 252 MB of packages on my non-X installation for a no-recommendations gnome-core. You might want to find a different desktop environment to install if that is a problem (or you can get by with a window manager alone -- a choice often overlooked).