Gene Heskett composed on 2019-04-03 08:48 (UTC-0400):

> I think the installers only other choice is xfce

You think wrong. Neither Gnome nor XFCE ever gets installed on any Debian here.
Whether Debian or any Debian derivative on which I want TDE, I include the
following on the installation kernel's cmdline:

	tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false

This produces a minimal installation, from which I add TDE to sources.list, so
that the only desktop becomes TDE after following the TDE Wiki instructions.

Typically before I add TDE I install the very light weight IceWM, to ensure I have
a working X, and something to fall back to, if TDE or its repos seem to be broken.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/