@Ashpool (memo to self & @Folly FYI) some notes/details I've encountered during the manual setup of the Desktop Environments (Debian 11).
some are (pre-)populating their panels/menus with icons to applications which aren't installed by the minimal DE setup itself (e.g. webbrowser in xfce) [note: removing orphaned start menu entries]. even if the network itself works fine, cinnamon integrates the network-manager into the desktop but that one is only managing interfaces not setup in /etc/network/interfaces and therefore always showing not connected/no connection [which may irritate most users] (?options?: any way to remove the network-interface from cinnamon? comment out the interface in above config and let the network-manager handle the connection?) some Desktop Environments aren't preinstalling a display manager (lxqt, mate). Stick to lightdm (as all other installs are using it), or is lxdm for lxqt a reasonable alternative?At least configuring an autologin for lightdm is pretty easy and sticking to it would eventually avoid the need for different (2be documented) approaches towards that option. weird issues with the soundcard/sound-device: on most(/all manual installed) DEs it is muted on 1st startup and with the exception of mate simply unmuting it and raising the volume solve the no sound issue. For mate, the install of the package mate-media was neccessary [edit: and raising pcm value slider in alsamixer afterwards]: Further research needed why installing alsa-tools wasn't sufficient. Any benefits by using VMWares "shared folders" capability? IMHO SSH and RetroPies Samba shares are far more convinient ways of transfering files between host&guest. (VMWare Tools copy&pase somewhat the worst option as it is leaving most of the time its junk within the hosts temp folder(s).
