Do I need to install the desktop env when installing a distro or do I need to install blank Linux and install a clean desktop env later? Thank you! 😃👌
I heard that sometimes installing a DE after the distro installation can cause some issues because you may forget or not know some dependencies, additional packages and setup commands (like adding users for system apps). Because of that I would highly recommend installing a DE during the distro installation because in that case everything necessary is usually included and at least somewhat configured
Really depends on what you want your system to be, if you want a lightweight system choose a barebones distro like Arch, Gentoo, Void or any server spin such as Fedora Server. Then, during installation you only get what you need. If you are going lightweight you'd probably want something like Sway WM, Hyprland or XFCE.
If you don't care for minimalism, then choosing a distro focused on a graphical interface such as Fedora Workstation will be much better for you, since that distro will be maintained with the idea of users using whatever DE it is, the distro maintainers probably contribute to upstream of the DE too. Support will also be easier since you'll find that these distros, while maybe having smaller communities, those communities ask more questions and get more solutions due to the Linux inexperience.
It makes sense to install a Desktop Environment during the installation. If you install a really bare-boned Linux installation without DE you might even end up without a graphical display manager to login making things complicated for a new Linux user.
I don't care about the difficulty only wants to know what is the best in the case of not installing to much packages, having a clean Linux distro
If you want a clean install, go for a carefully curated set of packages, rather than trying to mix and match to create your own selection - that's bound to result in a Frankenstein installation.
I'm partial to Fedora Silverblue, which is essentially just a single package containing the things you need to have a usable desktop. You can install what you need separately on top of that, but on updates, the whole base gets replaced wholesale - including, which is most relevant to your concerns, removing stuff that is no longer used/needed, rather than having that clog up over time.
Okay, good :) You can try for yourself. Install bare-boned Linux, and then install for example fvwm, a light weight Window Manager. Fair chance that for example on Debian you will have to figure out which more packages (e.g. xinit and xorg and fonts) to install to make the GUI work. I like Debian for reasons, but the software package dependencies are not always on par with the package installations is my experience.
There are options to start at any level you feel comfortable with. In the far end of not installing anything is Linux From Scratch. As the name implies, you start from nothing. I don't recommend this unless you have specific reasons. If you want a small command line only system to start from there's plenty of those, many distros offer this choice. Arch, Debian, etc.
You can do either. Just look up your package managers name for the full environment to install so you don’t end up with just the window manager or something.
The general idea is that a desktop environment provides you with common graphical user interface elements such as icons, toolbars, wallpaper, and desktop widgets. In other terms it's purely an aesthetic question. You can also decide which of these features will be useful to you and install the appropriate package(s) if you don't want to grab the bundle that comes with any DE.
As far of timing is concerned, you can always experiment and install what you need as you go. The only downside to wait will depend on how good your distro is in managing packages dependencies.
Personaly, my Linux journey made me realize that the features offer by a DE were actually negatively impacting my productivity and a windows manager (a tiling one for me) was all I needed. But this decision - like a lot of others - comes down to personal tastes. Note that not using a DE doesn't mean relying on the terminal only.
