Yeah, Debian will auto-configure that for you. Distros like Arch do not.
Well, it depends on what you install. If you install just xorg and a window manager, it usually won't boot into it.
If you install GNOME or KDE that ship with a display manager, it will be configured to boot into it. That is what you would usually want though.
Re:FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE Now Available
by RealStickman_ on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @11:44AM
(#35541660)
You can just disable the login manager on Debian and you'll start at the TTY every time.
I think I _may_ have done that before. What I thought was interesting is FreeBSD just did that without any extra steps. When I "apt-get install" a desktop environment in Ubuntu or Debian and reboot, the desktop environment loads by default. In FreeBSD, I guess there's some startup scripts I would need to edit to start X and the desktop manager...