Re: help with GNOME
On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, John Finlay wrote:
> I upgraded my debian installation from 2.0 to 2.1 using dselect and ftp.
> I figured I'd try GNOME so I installed most everything I could figure
> out that was GNOME related. (I find this installation process really
> clumsy and error prone. Is there any way to indicate that I want to
> install all of GNOME and have dselect do it? Will APT provide this
> higher level install process?)
>
No, we don't really have a way to say "install all the Gnome stuff," which
kind of sucks. If you get gnome-panel, gnome-session,
gnome-control-center, gnome-core, gnome-utils, gnome-terminal, gmc, then
that is pretty close.
> I tried to figure out how to use GNOME after installing but there's no
> manpage info (are manpages defunct in debian and/or linux in general?).
The GNU project provides Texinfo instead and Gnome provides DocBook
(converted to HTML).
> I started the gnome-session under fvwm95 and got a help browser which
> gave some really basic info about some apps and startup but precious
> little on the rest of the system including the gnome panel, gnome
> control, gnome session editor, etc. Is the help browser just really out
> of date?
>
You may well have an old Gnome. The new one is in a special staging area,
there is a link to it in this week's Debian Weekly News on www.debian.org.
However things will be more stable if you wait for it to show up in the
real distribution.
> I finally went to the GNOME.org site to retrieve the user guide (Is this
> included in the debian installation somewhere? I didn't find anything
> like it.)
>
I'm not sure whether it's packaged but it should be.
> So now my question is how come the debian gnome control, etc does appear
> to have the functionality indicated in the GNOME User Guide? Is this
> maybe a product of doing an upgrade instead of a clean install of
> 2.1? Are there other packages I need to install to get the full
> functionality? If so where can I get the list of required and features
> provided?
I think you have an old one.
> Does GNOME just not work weel on debian and should I just go
> with RedHat instead? (I get the feeling that GNOME integration with
> RedHat is much better)
>
No, not even remotely. The Red Hat packages are all screwed up, RPMs
weaknesses really show with something complex like Gnome. If you use Apt,
Gnome should work very well and you won't have to fool with all the
library dependencies as the Red Hat people do.
However, Debian's quality requires more development time, so the new Gnome
isn't in the main distribution yet. See the staging area link.
Red Hat has hired some people to work on Gnome but until the next version
of Red Hat comes out there won't be any "official" Gnome packages from
them.
> I've been using fvwm95 which seems much more useful and full featured
> than GNOME.
Gnome is not a replacement for fvwm95, it isn't a window manager. It is a
file manager, and a panel which duplicates some window manager
functionality. It's also a framework for developers to build nice
applications with consistent look and feel, and there are lots of Gnome
applications.
The file manager (gmc) works better with a "Gnome compliant" window
manager though; examples are wmaker-gnome, icewm-gnome, and enlightenment.
These may also be in the staging area.
> I have to assume given the excitement about GNOME that I am
> missing the information to get a functional and featureful GNOME setup
> in place. Can anyone provide a pointer to such info?
>
I would suggest the Gnome mailing list archives (gnome-list) or subscribe
to that list; also the Gnome User's Guide which may not be packaged but is
on the web site as you saw. It should correspond to the new Gnome in the
staging area.
Havoc
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