Comment 36 for bug 1754872

Are these tasks up-to-date and maintained by Ubuntu? Who knows. I never even heard about tasks and tasksel until well after the abysmal experience of trying to install the xubuntu-desktop package.

When I google "install xubuntu-desktop" this is what I see.

1 Answer

    1. Install Xubuntu sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop.
    2. Log out, log back in, selecting Xubuntu/Xfce as my interface.
    3. Chill out for a few days. See that things still work. ...
    4. Clean up. sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop sudo apt-get autoremove # removes dependencies of ubuntu-desktop.

Oct 30, 2011
system installation - How to I change from Ubuntu to Xubuntu ...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/65861/how-to-i-change-from-ubuntu-to-xubuntu

This is obviously WRONG for the reasons already stated in the above comments.

Maybe using tasksel and choosing xubuntu-desktop is the better way of installing. But I would urge the Ubuntu / Debian developers to consider the idea that most people using this system won't know when to uses tasks versus a meta package or even trust the tasks to be correct.

Even the documentation points to not bother with tasks or what they are for:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Tasksel

This function is similar to that of meta-packages, and, in fact, most of the tasks available from tasksel are also available as meta-packages from the Ubuntu package managers (such as Synaptic Package Manager or KPackageKit).

Because the package managers now have most of the tasks as meta-packages, tasksel is not installed by default on editions of Ubuntu (such as Desktop editions) that have package managers. (Tasksel is still installed by default on server editions).