Switching a newly-installed PC from Gnome to XFCE?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

2011/10/18 Ari Becker <wickedpheonix at gmail.com>:
> If you don't want to use GNOME then you should remove the GNOME and GDM
> packages.

Well, removing GNOME just to use a different desktop environment does
not sound like a good solution. After all, you might want to run GNOME
applications.

Omer, sorry, I don't know Debian (or GNOME, for that matter) way of
doing things very well. However, I am guessing that if you grep the
files under /etc/X11 for (g|k|x)dm you should be able to get a clue.
On RedHat systems (yeah, I know, not necessarily the same, but I have
no Debian around to check) there is /etc/X11/prefdm that does the
choice of display manager in a somewhat smart way, with fallbacks etc.
Along the way, it sources /etc/sysconfig/desktop (that does not exist
unless you create it) that specifies your preferred desktop
environment.  You should be able to specify what you want in a similar
manner.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org