This article describes how to remove the Gnome desktop environment from a Debian install.
Sometimes, unless you run the gauntlet of Expert Install (which is unnecessary if all you want is a general purpose, vanilla machine) then the Gnome desktop will be automatically installed from the installation DVD.
The following commands will remove it (and free up about 1GB disk space!):
# sudo apt-get autoremove gdm3
# sudo apt-get autoremove --purge gnome*
# reboot
Thanks! Are there any other unnecessary libraries besides gdm3 that come with gnome, that I could also remove without breaking anything?
Hi, no worries 🙂 I think the purge should rid the system of all associated libraries but you could check the package list against what you still have installed to see if anything has been left hanging around on your system: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gnome/