Debian Jesse is going to have Gnome3 as the default desktop.
The desktop re-qualification page, used to help choose which desktop will be default, has in the Jesse version a weight for systemd integration, and of course only Gnome3 does it (at least for now). This will surely make the systemd/gnome3 fanbase happy, but possibly will make others unhappy, as it [may] be seen as another step towards mono-culture, until we soon end up with all distros being redhat clones.
(Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:27PM
Debian has, and probably always will, offer a bare-bones installer where the user can choose what desktop to install -- or even no desktop at all, as Debian is a popular distro for headless server installations. This news is about returning to GNOME as the default for novice computer users who just click through the installer, not making it mandatory for people who want to customize.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:35PM
I guess I have only ever ran the barebones installer then. I was unaware there was a straight Debian installer that installed a whole desktop.
"not making it mandatory for people who want to customize"
Of course not. You can go away from the defaults in any Linux distribution.