Capítulo 7. GUI System

Tabla de contenidos

7.1. GUI desktop environment
7.2. GUI communication protocol
7.3. GUI infrastructure
7.4. GUI applications
7.5. Fonts
7.5.1. Tipos de letras fundamentales
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. Portapapeles

There are several choices for the full featured GUI desktop environment on the Debian system.


[Sugerencia] Sugerencia

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.

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 Sección 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.

[Nota] Nota

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.

Here are notable GUI infrastructure packages for the GNOME on Wayland environment.


Here, "[auto]" means that these packages are automatically installed when task-gnome-desktop is installed.

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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".

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.

Tabla 7.3. List of notable GUI applications

paquete popularidad tamaño del paquete tipo descripción
evolution V:31, I:236 493 GNOME Gestor de información personal (trabajo en grupo y correo electrónico)
thunderbird V:50, I:130 202238 GTK Email client (Mozilla Thunderbird)
kontact V:1, I:14 2203 KDE Gestor de información personal (trabajo en grupo y correo electrónico)
libreoffice-writer V:153, I:433 37611 LO procesador de textos
abiword V:1, I:11 5133 GNOME procesador de textos
calligrawords V:0, I:7 5893 KDE procesador de textos
scribus V:2, I:22 30523 KDE desktop publishing editor to edit PDF files
glabels V:0, I:4 1327 GNOME editor de etiquetas
libreoffice-calc V:148, I:430 30127 LO hoja de cálculo
gnumeric V:5, I:19 10084 GNOME hoja de cálculo
calligrasheets V:0, I:5 11326 KDE hoja de cálculo
libreoffice-impress V:118, I:426 9248 LO presentación
calligrastage V:0, I:5 5198 KDE presentación
libreoffice-base V:78, I:219 6047 LO gestión de bases de datos
kexi V:0, I:2 7118 KDE gestión de bases de datos
libreoffice-draw V:119, I:427 13442 LO editor de gráficos vectoriales (dibujo)
inkscape V:35, I:167 87324 GNOME editor de gráficos vectoriales (dibujo)
karbon V:0, I:6 3593 KDE editor de gráficos vectoriales (dibujo)
dia V:3, I:28 3620 GTK editor de diagramas de flujos y otros diagramas
gimp V:61, I:300 19827 GTK editor de gráficos de mapas de bits (Pintura)
shotwell V:17, I:237 6402 GTK organizador de fotos digitales
digikam V:2, I:12 2921 KDE organizador de fotos digitales
darktable V:5, I:16 26575 GTK lighttable and darkroom for photographers
planner V:0, I:4 1146 GNOME gestión de proyectos
calligraplan V:0, I:1 18517 KDE gestión de proyectos
gnucash V:3, I:10 32394 GNOME finanzas personales
homebank V:0, I:2 1114 GTK finanzas personales
lilypond V:1, I:8 7363 - music typesetter
kmymoney V:0, I:2 12850 KDE finanzas personales
librecad V:2, I:16 8309 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (2D)
freecad I:18 59 Qt-app computer-aided design (CAD) system (3D)
kicad V:2, I:14 193841 GTK electronic schematic and PCB design software
xsane V:16, I:161 2346 GTK interfaz de usuario de escáner
libreoffice-math V:104, I:430 2298 LO editor matemático de fórmulas/ecuaciones
calibre V:9, I:33 57919 KDE gestión de bibliotecas y conversor de libros electrónicos
fbreader V:1, I:13 2631 GTK lector de libros electrónicos
evince V:107, I:323 978 GNOME visor de documentos (pdf)
okular V:42, I:114 15376 KDE visor de documentos (pdf)
x11-apps V:29, I:461 2437 pure X-app xeyes(1), etc.
x11-utils V:169, I:581 712 pure X-app xev(1), xwininfo(1)etc.

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.

Tabla 7.4. List of notable TrueType and OpenType fonts

paquete popularidad tamaño sans serif mono note on font
fonts-cantarell V:103, I:296 572 59 - - Cantarell (GNOME 3, display)
fonts-noto I:134 35 61 63 40 Noto fonts (Google, multi-lingual with CJK)
fonts-dejavu I:449 39 58 68 40 DejaVu (GNOME 2, MCM:Verdana, extended Bitstream Vera)
fonts-liberation2 V:107, I:371 4290 56 60 40 Liberation fonts for LibreOffice (Red Hat, MCMATC)
fonts-croscore V:17, I:46 5278 56 60 40 Chrome OS: Arimo, Tinos and Cousine (Google, MCMATC)
fonts-crosextra-carlito V:24, I:214 2732 57 - - Chrome OS: Carlito (Google, MCM:Calibri )
fonts-crosextra-caladea I:212 258 - 55 - Chrome OS: Caladea (Google, MCM:Cambria ) (Latin only )
fonts-freefont-ttf V:63, I:247 6656 57 59 40 GNU FreeFont (extended URW Nimbus)
fonts-quicksand I:390 392 56 - - Debian task-desktop, Quicksand (display, Latin only)
fonts-hack V:17, I:94 2508 - - 40 P A typeface designed for source code Hack (Facebook)
fonts-sil-gentiumplus I:37 13568 - 54 - Gentium SIL
fonts-sil-charis V:3, I:22 6406 - 59 - Charis SIL
fonts-urw-base35 V:112, I:295 11095 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:2 452 - - 33 Cool retro terminal fonts
ttf-mscorefonts-installer V:1, I:59 92 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.

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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.

Many mostly GUI applications on Linux are available in binary formats from non-Debian sources.

[Aviso] Aviso

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 Sección 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)


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.


There are several ways to connect from an application on a remote host to the X server including xwayland on the local host.


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
[Nota] Nota

For xwayland, XAUTHORITY holds value like "/run/user/1000/.mutter-Xwaylandauth.YVSU30".

For clipping text to clipboard, see Sección 1.4.4, “Mouse operations”.

For clipping graphics to clipboard, see Sección 11.6, “Herramientas para información gráfica”.

Some CLI commands can manipulate character clipboard (PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD), too.