Dropline with Slack 12
 

I've been a faithful user of Freerock GNOME for a couple of years, using his 2.16 unstable on several machines until now.
I assume he's busy with other things, though, because there's been no visible activity for a long time.

Eventually. that leaves me with two options - Dropline or drop GNOME. (I tried compiling GNOME myself and spent many frustrating days, so that's not a viable alternative.) I'm thinking of making the change now, along with 12.0.

Questions:

1. Will the latest Dropline work with 12.0? All of the info on their site points to 11.0.

2. How well is it maintained? I looked through their site and forums, but found very little activity let alone information about 12.0 (one thread on 12RC1 and one "woohoo" on 12.0).

Thanks.

I ran DLG for a time, it is a very stable version of Gnome for Slackware. I liked it better than FRG. DLG works very well, it is designed for a 2.6x kernel so it should probably work with 12.0. Not sure though if it'll run on 12.0 ( I'd ask at their forum).
I'm really liking XFce4.4.1 on Slackware 12.0:-)

XFCE4 is my preference, too. I run it on three laptops and two desktops. I load GNOME on all of them (except one minimal install server) for the applications and as an alternate environment for testing.

I have two sons running Linux. One prefers GNOME, the other KDE. It's all about choices. :)

Does it still install PAM?

Sorry, but I can't remember if it does or not, it has been awhile since I ran DLG. Maybe they've got a package list at the DLG site?

Dropline still uses PAM.

Check out slack.eu's GnomeSlacky. They're up to Gnome 18.2 for Slack 11, and have a guide for installing it on slack-current/12. They claim to pick up where GWare left off.

Jim

correction on the link Jim. it's slacky.eu not slack.eu. and regarding the guide for installing it to slack12, can you share the link? the site is in italian so i cant understand it.

I found this on the dropline forums:

http://forums.droplinegnome.org/viewtopic.php?p=36989

Although I dislike it, but I'll probably wait until they get a stable release out for Slackware 12.

Hmm. Good info, but now I'm wondering ...

I'm not sure I like the "close enough" approach indicated by that statement. Also, clearly, "rebuilding for Slack 12" implies some incompatibilities with 11, no? I think I'll jst forge ahead with the Slack upgrade and see what, if any breakage ensues with GNOME.

I don't generally think it's a good idea to install SW 11 packages on SW 12. I noticed it too late, but for one, the KDE directory isn't /opt/kde anymore. Sure, install something in /opt/kde and it still works, but it's not a good idea in my opinion.

It's like before, you can use packages from a previous version but it's not recommended.

What I'm curious about, is when SW 12 packages are going to start appearing in linuxpackages.net.

actually they are already preparing for SW12.0. there are some packages being released for slack12 already.

Sorry about the typo. Glad you caught it.

Slacky.eu's GnomeSlacky instructions for Current (12), translated into English via Google:

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl...rent%26hl%3Den

Agreed, XFce4 is excellent!:D
For some reason I really prefer Gnome on my Debian box. Having the freedom to choose whatever environment you want to use is a great thing.
FOSS rules:-)

compile gnome from source
 

There are packages I didn't manage to compile (epiphany and yelp), they seem not to like SeaMonkey and I *will not* install the old Mozilla 1.7.x. But I managed to compile a functional GNOME desktop using SlackBuilds.

-I based my build system on the official KDE Slackware build system (made a gnome.SlackBuild with a gnome.options general options file and many directories with sources and minor build scripts). I used the sources from www.gnome.org plus some dependencies from www.freedesktop.org and the python bindings packages (from the www.gnome.org server but not included in the "official" sources).

-I copied some options from the gsb.SlackBuild system

-And some more from the GARNOME build system

-And some more from Dropline.

I made a script to fix the install, which I am polishing by now. (It works, but it gives me some annoying messages while installing) My build is *almost* absolutely unintrusive (it only replaces gnome-icon-theme).

I am still checking the dropline site, just to learn how to successfully compile epiphany and yelp and everything depending on Gecko.

Sounds great!

Are you going to make your build scripts available for download somewhere?

Do your scripts automatically download all the required packages & dependancies?