Gnome install??
 

Hey Guys,

I've installed Slack 10.2 but I only have KDE. How do I install Gnome without having to reinstall the whole OS??

Thanks in Advance...

Gnomes specially for Slackware:

Dropline Gnome - http://www.droplinegnome.net/
FreeRock Gnome - http://gsb.freerock.org/

Last time I tried the FreeRock it screwed up my whole system, so I prefer Dropline, even I am not using Gnome or KDE anymore. But it is up to you.

I would get dropline gnome as I just like it better.

you go to droplines website, then you download the dropline installer http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...l.tgz?download and installed su to root "installpkg dropline-installer-2.14.1-i686-1dl.tgz" then after it is installed you run the command "dropline-installer" and then you pick the programs you want and it will auto download and install the programs. After all that you restart x-windows or run x-windows and you will see the changes.

One more thing. you will have to run xwmconfig and choose gnome as the default windows manager before you do startx or restart xwindows

Thanks for the link:-)
Just out of curiousity, why do you like dropline gnome better? I've never run that. I've used Freerock gnome on slack 10.2.
If dropline is relatively bug free I'd like to try it out:-)

Welcome.

I just like it better probably because I have used it alot longer. It has every application I need for work and home. It comes with Evolution for email, Totem for videos. I don't notice any bugs and I use it everyday at work and at home. It is easy to install as you download, install, hit enter a few times and come back an hour later and everything is done. It's easy to update with the Dropline Updater which lets you know when updates are available. My boss got me hooked on it, before gnome I used KDE and hated gnome, now I hate KDE.

:)

Dropline gets my vote too. Stuff just works in dropline. Dropline is older, and it is a much more mature project, and the support on the forums/mailing lists is fantastic.

It does make "changes" to the "base system", but chances are, you won't notice anything, and the changes are drastically beneficial(in automounting, and a few miscellaneous things that you probably won't notice, but would if they were broken).

I personally would only use Freerock on a system where I wanted the gnome libraries, but i'd use Dropline for an actual desktop.

PS: I've been using KDE since 2.2 in Mandrake 7.2, and I did not use Gnome until I installed Redhat a little while later, and I still preferred KDE, all the way up to 3.3 or so, but now I cannot stand it. KDE is horrible compared to gnome, at least in my opinion. Gnome is much more elegant, and almost everything I do is much more efficient, and Gnome is always the first to adopt new technologies.(Dbus, hal, etc.), and now I can't even imagine using a Desktop without dbus/hal.

(That is one of my gripes with FreeBSD, and it is also why I can't even use Windowmaker anymore, even though the Next GUI was my favorite throughout the entire 90s)

And dropline and Ubuntu are probably the best, most vanilla, implementations of Gnome.

Thanks gentlemen,

Okay, I'm sold:-) Dropline gnome sounds like a rock-solid choice. Does dropline come with the JRE?

Nope, but JRE 1.5 comes with Slackware 10.2 by default. :D

Just a note... I am one of the Dropline developers. I'd like to encourage you to read all of the requirements and download instructions before installing (rather than just downloading the installer from the link mentioned above).

http://droplinegnome.org/?page_id=5
http://droplinegnome.org/?page_id=6

I feel that this information is important for all users to have the best possible experience with their GNOME install. Please feel free to use our forums or IRC channel if you have any questions. :D

Well, zborgered, no offence, but I, like Patrick Volkersding himself, would recommend against using Dropline. This is not only because Dropline changes more of Slackware than it should, but also because when a security update comes out for a Slackware component that Dropline changes, Pat and the Dropline project BOTH release updated versions of the same component. I find that very annoying. Needless to say, I've tried Dropline and didn't like it, so another reason why I don't like Dropline is because it's darn near impossible to uninstall.

I use Freerock myself. It's what the people who contribute to LinuxPackages.net use, so it's a safe choice.

Don't take my comments as if they come from the entire dropline community, but no offence, but that makes no sense at all.

A USER of dropline wouldn't want to uninstall it anyway, and there is NO reason to uninstall it either, as it does not tamper with the rest of the system. You can install dropline and run KDE, or Windowmaker, or Fluxbox. No reason to uninstall it.


Dropline replaces EXACTLY what is necessary. It doesn't replace more than it should, It replaces exactly what is necessary for a fully-functioning gnome system. And replacing is NOT a bad thing. Who the hell cares? Xorg is xorg, no matter if it was packaged by Pat or Dropline, it's still Xorg. It's the EXACT same software. And it is replaced because it NEEDS to be replaced for gnome to work properly. Replacing "more than it should" would mean Dropline replaces things like QT, which it does not. It replaces Xorg, and adds pam, because it is actually necessary for that.

And freerock also releases security updates too, i don't understand what you mean by what you said. If there is a gtk security bug, Freerock, Dropline AND pat will release an update to it, if anything, it just goes to show how efficient the dropline developers really are.


Why don't you go out and actually read what dropline replaces, and then compare it to what freerock replaces, and then compare the number of things that don't work in freerock to the number of things that don't work in dropline. You'll see it's quite worth it.

EDIT; Now don't get me wrong, it's NOT that I hate Freerock, it's just that I hate it when Freerock users spread FUD about, "LOLZOMG Dropline replaces teh kernel with 2.5.20 don't use it omg". I'd recommend freerock if you just want libraries, but overall, it's not as fast as dropline, it's not as stable as dropline, and things just don't work, "as they should" in freerock, without, get this.... replacing certain system components with your own.

Well, PV never has recommended 'against' using Dropline. He's simply suggested that he "cannot give it the same sort of nod because of the inclusion of PAM and the replacement X11 builds" (slightly paraphrased). However, seeing as he's never used any of the third-party GNOME desktops (to my knowledge) I do not believe that he's the best person to take advice from on this issue. After all... If it were up to him, you wouldn't be using GNOME 2 at all (as evident by its removal in Slackware altogether). One thing that I can agree with the man on is the fact that it's *your choice*. People seem to miss these things when they interpret the things that he's said in that ChangeLog.

Seeing as we only have a few more replacement packs than the other popular GNOME desktop for Slack (e.g. X11 and Shadow), this really is a moot point. And, in such a case as X11, we already have updates going online currently that are not yet fixed in Slackware 10.2 (and may not ever be anyway, since it only effects 2.6 series kernels). Regardless, with Dropline - you are patched promptly. Our X11 also provides evdev support in addition to patches for known X11 bugs that will cause certain things to *never* work on the other GNOME desktops (e.g. the xft bug).

Replaced packs:

http://forums.droplinegnome.org/viewtopic.php?t=4739

Note that the majority of replaced packages (aside from X11, Shadow, and Mozilla.org apps) are GNOME components anyway, and as such should be updated by us when an advisory or patch is issued. There is no way for us to work around the fact that PV is going to include essential GNOME/GTK apps and libraries in Slackware. We *must* keep these things up-to-date for modern GNOME builds. Many of these "replaced" components are things that we had in Dropline before Slackware ever did anyway (Firefox, Thunderbird). Our builds simply work better, are faster, and are built to be ideal for linking external applications that need Gecko (like GNOME's Epiphany browser). It gives us less of an "unkown" to work against when unexpected Slackware updates are issued.

To each his own though. It's nice that people like the various GNOME desktops for Slack. It gives users choice. That was the whole point of the Dropline project to begin with. One can say that the other GNOME desktops are "less intrusive", but things are changing. The other GNOME desktops are including things like Udev, fighting a losing battle to patch the heck out of GNOME to work around Slackware's lack of PAM support (which is quickly becoming a requirement for many programs and libraries these days), and using other less-orthodox (and less secure) means to work around-slackware'isms that make things extremely complicated for people like us.

We've already been through all of that over the years now, and we simply want things to "just work". We also want to provide users with timely and functional updates to the GNOME desktop (note that we are still the only third-party GNOME desktop for Slackware with a stable 2.14.x release which has been available for 2 months now). Please don't take this as criticism for any other projects. I just simply hope that end-users weigh all of the variables, and actually research things before making quick assumptions about the nature of these various GNOME projects.

To close... Dropline is no more impossible to uninstall than any of the other GNOME desktops. However, I would advise users, in the case of any of them, to simply use a fresh installation of Slackware rather than trying to uninstall things. If a Shadow and X11 update makes it tougher to uninstall Dropline vs. another GNOME desktop, then you probably should not be using Slackware anyway. The uninstallation process of any of the GNOME desktops requires that a user has at least a minimal concept of the package management on their system. This is, in a sense, a limitation of Slackware's dated package management itself... Not the GNOME desktop.

We encourage users to try all of the GNOME desktops and use the one that you like best. It is your system, afterall. Choice is the best part about the OS that we all love.

Of course there's a reason. You need to uninstall Dropline if you want to try Freerock or GWare. Since the OP hasn't tried any of the three, this is something he should eventually do. Gware and Freerock make it extremely easy to uninstall them and try something else, such as Dropline; their uninstallation instructions are just a few steps in their README files. Uninstalling Dropline is several orders of magnitude more difficult. I mean, just look at the list of replaced Slack packages that you'll have to put back by hand.

Zborgered, in the post below yours, actually recommends wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Slackware rather than trying to uninstall Dropline.

That makes no sense. If it's exactly the same software, then it doesn't need to be replaced.

Zborgered, can you tell us more about the Xft bug you mentioned, that made it necessary for you to build your own X packages? I've spent quite a bit of time with Gware and Freerock and I haven't run into problems.

I didn't say that, and it's clear from the above that LiquidTenMillion is the only person spreading FUD here.

I have extensive experience with both Gware and Dropline. There are no stability problems in either, they're both equally fast, and they both have fully functional components. I was very clear about my reasons for recommending Freerock over Dropline, so don't attack me personally for saying something I did not say.

You have to replace those exact same packages in Freerock that you do in dropline. They are gnome components, about 75% of them are, and are provided by both freerock and dropline.



Show me this mythical "easy route" to uninstalling freerock. It's not there. Guess how you uninstall dropline? Replace "frg" with "dl" in those methods, and you now have uninstalled dropline.

Why do you think that you must reinstall some packs? Because FRG replaces them. Dropline and freerock uninstallation routines are essentially identical.

If you can't uninstall dropline, then you REALLY shouldn't be using Slackware, and you DEFINITELY shouldn't be using gnome on slackware.

No. I suggested that you reinstall Slackware rather than trying to uninstall *any* of the three GNOME desktops (I was very specific about this). The issues are the same, regardless of the desktop you choose. It is not specific to Dropline. Dropline's replaced packages list is detailed as well as those of any of the other GNOME desktops. Expect a little effort with any of the GNOME desktops. It cannot be avoided due to the fact that Slackware has a lot of GNOME/GTK components still (many of which are too old for modern GNOME releases).

When you install any of the third-party GNOME desktops, you no longer have a stock Slackware system. Keep this in mind. This is not exclusive to only Dropline. I cannot advocate that novices try to completely manage this on Slackware. As demonstrated here, having to deal with 20+ packages (this goes for all of the third-party GNOME desktops) can be at least a bit tedious.

The reality is that the entire GNOME desktop and platform need at least 200-250 packages to be functional enough to be Ubuntu-class desktops. If you want that on Slackware, then you have to compromise somewhere. Many folks simply do not understand the scope of such a project, or what it involves to make it work on Slackware.

Though it was only an example, the XFT bug is a bug that causes the gnome font viewer to crash on unpatched X11 installs. If you go to URI "fonts://" in Nautilus, then it will likely crash on installs with the stock Slackware X.org 6.8.2 packages. That used to be the case (for a long time). The bug has been fixed in later X.org releases.

I should also mention that the Dropline of a few years ago is not the same Dropline of today. Before Dropline GNOME became a community project, the previous maintainer wished to support several versions of Slackware at one time. This, of course, required *many* more replacement packages for Slackware's own. When Dropline became a community project, we decided that this made things much too difficult. One of our goals over the last year was to slowly strip out replacement packs over time. We've done quite a lot of work on this, and there is an obvious difference in the Dropline GNOME of today when compared to the Dropline GNOME of 2004. As a whole, excluding excluding X11, there are only 10 more packages that we replace vs one of the other GNOME desktops.

I don't think that it does the community any good to argue about Slackware and GNOME. Everyone has their own preferences. We are not competing projects. The honest truth is that Dropline, FRG, and GWARE are not really all that different. In fact, we often work together on fixing problems that we all seem to encounter on Slackware (why do the same work twice?). I would say that the difference in project goals allow us to be a bit more liberal in how we handle problems on Slackware, but in the end I believe that this allows us to polish things to a level of usability and stability that is would not otherwise be possible.

I cannot say that Dropline is for everyone, and I think that projects like FRG and GWARE fill a perfect niche for some Slackware GNOME fans that do not use Dropline. I do, however, believe that there are a lot of misinformed Slackware users out there that misunderstand many things about these various projects. I think that it is fair to give everyone an equal chance to try all three desktops. All three projects work very hard, and nobody likes their face to be rubbed in the mud after spending many sleepless nights to provide a free desktop to the Slackware community.

Can somebody add a few words about GWare? A couple years ago, I did a little research and it seemed that GWare was pretty good. Do they still rate?

Also, zborgerd mentioned that Dropline, FRG, and GWare fill niches. Just what IS today's differences in the three of them?

--vonSt
PS: I sheepishly admit that when Patrick dropped Gnome, I grabbed GWare so that I could keep my addiction to AisleRiot (solitare). Pretty much, that's the only on-the-surface reason I kept Gnome.