10.1 trying to install xfce

Hi. For the past two nights, I've been trying to install xfce because I've only heard good things about it from people in the Firefox community. It took all of last night to figure out that I needed to install my GLib using root, not my username, and now that works fine. Now, the challenge is gtk+. I grabbed the latest tar.gz from the offical website (the 2.6.7 version) and followed their instructions. From the console, I'm in as root, and did the tar xvfz or whatever thing, unpacked it, then did ./configure --prefix=/opt/gtk like it said and I get:

checking for glib-2.0>= 2.6.0 atk >= 1.0.1 pango >= 1.8.0... Package glib-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing 'glib-2.0.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'glib-2.0' found

configure: error: Library requirements (glib-2.0 >= 2.6.0 atk >= 1.0.1 pango >= 1.8.0) not met; consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if your libraries are in a nonstandard prefix so pkg-config can find them.


So... I tried installing pango, but that proved tough because it said I needed some weird font files. Since I'm new to Linux, can someone step me through the dependencies and the commands I need to get gtk+ to install from top to bottom? I'm willing to be patient!

Thank you very much,
-Brian

You are doing things the hard way. Go to zebulon.org.uk to find out about urpmi and then go to easyurpmi for instructions on how to configure it. Once you have configured your urpmi sources, start the Mandrake Control Center, go to the Software module and choose Software Installation. Search for xfce, select the packages you want to install and you are done.

Well, then.

I feel really dumb now haha.

Thank you so much - I'll try that method out in a little bit.

-Brian

Don't (feel dumb). It took me several weeks to learn urpmi existed...

maybe you should give gentoo a shot...then installing xfce (or anything else) wouldn't be all that difficult.

emerge xfce

:-)

I'm sure you have all heard all of this, so I won't say anything. Though I'll stick in more of my 2 cents ;-)

Some people may think that installing gentoo is difficult, I think it's challenging...but the experience is rewarding. Gentoo is the best if you want to understand what is really going on, wnat to tweak and customize the system, or like simplicity. Think of installing gentoo like installing linux for the first time and you'll learn more than you can imagine.