I had issues installing just fbx because EUFI was disabled in the bios so my week old installation was done on top of Debian with KDE Plasma
Plasma is a bit heavy and there were a few things to tweak after install so I’m probably going to start over.
I was thinking I’d install FBX the standard way and then add a bare desktop minus all the apps that come with a full desktop install, bottable usb iso.
But fbx has Gnome. Unfortunately I can’t read much about it due to the Read more… link at
/freedombox/apps/gnome/
giving me Error: Page not found: /freedombox/help/manual/en/GNOME
I also did a search of the FBX Manual page.
Seems there’s not been much talk about it since the FBX 25.2 release announcement in Jan 2025.
Is it stable?
What would happen if I installed it considering I have a Debian KDE base?
Would I simply get the choice between the two at login?
Is it a full desktop as similar to installing via tasksel or is it lighter?
Machine specs will handle it either way but the lighter the better for a server.
I see it can be disabled but requires a restart. When restarted, would it end up at the typical FBX terminal/prompt?
Manual page was never written for GNOME, looks like we postponed it when app was added and later… forgot. I will write one now.
GNOME app is stable. It simply installs the “gnome” package and “graphical.target” as systemd default boot target.
Disabling the GNOME app would set “multi-user.target” as default. You will see the typical terminal login instead of graphical login in the terminal. No resources related to GNOME will be consumed except disk space for which you will need to uninstall the app.
Installing via FreedomBox web interface does not make it lighter than installing via tasksel, assuming tasksel does something similar to installing the “gnome” package.
It provides full desktop.
If you seek lighter desktop environment that GNOME, try Xfce or similar. Simply install the package on the terminal with tasksel.
It should be noted then when logged out, RAM usage for the GNOME login greeter is about 1.5GiB and CPU usage is negligible. This may be affordable even for a server depending on the machine configuration.
If KDE and other desktop environments are installed alongside GNOME, I believe you can choose which one to login.
On a prior FBX, I tried most of the different desktops available via tasksel and XFCE/LXDE were a near tie at least amount of RAM used. All of them become negligible by just logging out.
I’ve got 16 GB of RAM. Intel 4 core N95 with built in Intel UHD graphics.
Plenty for a personal web server, even with a desktop.
Installed FBX Gnome and with some work, got rid of KDE Plasma and most related apps.
Now sitting at 3.0 GB of RAM in use as opposed to 3.6 that KDE/Plasma was using.
Bit of an odd thing. For the login session, I have choices
GNOME on Wayland
GNOME (Wayland)
GNOME on Xorg
GNOME
Haven’t tried on Xorg and the top one seemed snappier than the other two Gnome entries which were sluggish. Looks like Gnome Xorg is going away so I won’t bother to try it.
That’s a pretty good result, especially dropping from 3.6 GB to 3.0 GB after switching to GNOME. The Wayland options do seem a bit confusing, but the snappier one is probably the easiest choice if it’s working well for you.
Actually I ended up going with XFCE with no desktop manager. It boots to FBX login screen. At that point FBX is running and I can access it via the web. If I want to use XFCE on the FBX box, I log into fbx to get a terminal and then type startxfce4 which loads the XFCE desktop. When I’m done, I log out of XFCE and am back to the terminal.
Now I’m down to 2.6 GB with XFCE running or 1.7 without. Between SSH/SSH Pilot and a file manager app for Cockpit called Navigator, I won’t be starting XFCE very often.