Nov 19 2025
For this installation, it's best to start out with a command line version of Debian running on your PC. If you need a guide for setting up Debian command line only version, see here.
The MATE desktop package provides a traditional Linux desktop experience. It's simple and lightweight. It works with lightdm to support autologin.
Today we'll install lightdm, mate-core, and network-manager-gnome to take our Debian operating system from a command line interface (CLI) to a graphical user interface (GUI), yay.
Just login to your Debian box and punch in the following command!
sudo apt install mate-core lightdm network-manager-gnome
Once the command completes, reboot your operating system and check it out. So suave.
Want to automatically login to your new GUI? See how you can edit the right config here.