I cannot tell you how much I love that the process of
"my Linux distro suddenly booted into Gnome because I didn't realize a package I installed yesterday had all of Gnome as a dependency"
is referred to at
"getting gnomed"

https://www.reddit.com/r/gotgnomed/

@memoriesin8bit I didn't know ๐Ÿคฃ
But after a laugh I think a distro should not change your default DE, it's a bad behaviour
@pikario The way I understand is that often it's through people installing ProtonVPN tray icon which is only needed for Gnome and has all of it as a dependency. This then also installs GDM which boots to Gnome by default.
What I don't understand, yet is how just installing a Display/Login Manager automatically activates it. Say I installed it, I would need to disable SDDM and enable GDM. But I suppose some more beginner friendly distros do this automatically by now?
@memoriesin8bit
This sounds like something that could have happened twenty years ago. But now? This behavior is anything but beginner friendly.
(Saying this as a GNOME enthousiast since v1.2 or thereabout)
@pikario
@reinouts @pikario Agreed. Installing a whole desktop cause you accidentally install a package made for that desktop - okay fine. The rest is not okay. As I said before, I don't even know how that works. Maybe Mint automatically activates services you just installed to make it easier for newcomers? I dunno.

@memoriesin8bit @reinouts @pikario

It's often due to user error. They follow this link: https://protonvpn.com/support/official-linux-vpn-mint then click on the other link https://protonvpn.com/support/official-ubuntu-vpn-setup/ and unfortunately skip this part before clicking:

โ€œHowever, if installing the GUI app, please skip the Linux system tray icon (optional) step, as the gnome-shell-extension-appindicator package will install the entire GNOME desktop environment as a dependency.โ€

Poorly worded instructions? Maybe

How to install a VPN on Linux Mint | Proton VPN

How to install a VPN on Linux Mint systems using the Proton VPN Linux app

Proton VPN
@240185
Even if the user makes this error, the system should be forgiving enough not to change the whole default desktop environment without explicit user consent.
@memoriesin8bit @pikario