03 Sep 2025 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'
I often choose Linux Mint XFCE when I need a good looking and comfortable system quick. But sometimes I'd rather have a more stable system and match what I have on the server, which is Debian 13. Unfortunately Debian with XFCE doesn't look as good as Linux Mint with XFCE. In this post I'll explain what you can do to make Debian with XFCE look like Linux Mint XFCE.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is a Linux Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu. It uses Cinnamon as Desktop Environment which is also quite pretty. You should consider LMDE before following this tutorial on how to customize Debian with XFCE to look like Linux Mint XFCE. Linux Mint Debian Edition is a good looking and well supported Cinnamon Desktop Environment and under the hood it still is Debian. It is expected that LMDE 7 based on Debian 13 will be released soon (LMDE 6 is based on Debian 12).
Download Linux Mint Debian Edition here
I am using the debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
and when booting from that image I choose the Graphical install. After installing Region, language and keyboard layout it will install the network. After the network I choose not to setup a root password (leave fields empty) and then setup a first user (can become root using sudo
). When asking what to do with the disk choose "Guided - use entire disk and set up encrypted LVM" to enable full disk encryption using LUKS. Choose "Separate /home partition" when asked how to partition the disk. This is nice when you are reinstalling Linux. After confirming that changes must be written to disk the installer starts copying files. It will ask you to choose a local mirror and whether you want to participate in the package popularity contest. Next is the "Software selection" list. Uncheck "GNOME" and check "Xfce" before you continue to ensure XFCE is installed as default Desktop Environment. Finally install the bootloader on the drive and reboot the system.
In order to make the task bar look more familiar do:
We need a few new sources:
gpg --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 302F0738F465C1535761F965A6616109451BBBF2
gpg --export 302F0738F465C1535761F965A6616109451BBBF2 | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/linuxmint.gpg > /dev/null
echo deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/linuxmint.gpg] http://packages.linuxmint.com zara main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxmint.list
sudo sed -i 's/non-free-firmware/non-free non-free-firmware/g' sources.list
sudo apt update
Now we can install the requirements:
sudo apt install mint-x-icons mint-y-icons mint-themes mint-backgrounds-wallpapers
sudo apt install mint-backgrounds-xfce bibata-cursor-theme fonts-ubuntu mugshot
sudo apt install lightdm-settings slick-greeter
In order to remove the new sources:
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxmint.list
sudo sed -i 's/non-free non-free-firmware/non-free-firmware/g' sources.list
sudo apt update
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is itself based on Debian, but there are differences in how packages are built and maintained. Therefor it is safer to disable these sources to avoid unexpected upgrades on the (Ubuntu or Mint specific) packages.
We create a new theme for the xfce4-terminal application:
sudo nano /usr/share/xfce4/terminal/colorschemes/linux-mint.theme
Now paste the following colors:
[Scheme]
Name=Linux Mint
ColorForeground=#ffffff
ColorBackground=#3c3c3c
ColorCursor=#867f81
ColorPalette=#000000;#cc0000;#4e9a06;#c4a000;#3465a4;#75507b;#06989a;#d3d7cf;#555753;#ef2929;#8ae234;#fce94f;#739fcf;#ad7fa8;#34e2e2;#eeeeec
BoldIsBright=true
NB: These are extracted from a default config on a real Mint XFCE installation.
Since we have created a new terminal theme we can now apply it:
Now the terminal should also look like Mint XFCE.
Instead of installing Firefox from the Mozilla repository I recommend installing LibreWolf, a custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom.
See: https://tqdev.com/2025-install-librewolf-a-better-version-of-firefox
Running Debian as a desktop is more fun when Debian looks good. And in this tutorial we showed that we can make Debian look like Mint XFCE (and I like how that looks and how fast it feels). It does requires some tinkering, but this is a nice opportunity to learn all the settings that can be tweaked.
Enjoy!
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