The GNOME Configuration HOWTO

Content: 1. What is GNOME?2. Installing GNOME3. Configuring GNOME

1.  What is GNOME?

The Project

The GNOME project is a free softwareproject dedicated to the development of GNOME, a Unix/Linux desktop suite anddevelopment platform. The GNOMEFoundation coordinates the development and other aspects of the GNOMEProject.

The Software

GNOME is a desktop environment and a development platform. This piece of freesoftware is the desktop of choice for several industry leaders. It isinteresting both for business users, home users as well as developers.

The Community

Like with any big free software project, GNOME has an extensive user- anddevelopment base. Footnotescontains GNOME Desktop news for users; GnomePlanet is for hackers/contributors andDeveloper.Gnome.Org is for theGNOME developers.

2.  Installing GNOME

What do you need?

Before you start installing GNOME, you might want to edit your USE variables.Make sure that X, gtk, and gnome are in your USE variablelisted in /etc/make.conf. If you want support for hald, thehardware abstraction layer daemon add hal to your USE flags. The samegoes for dbus, a system message bus Gnome uses extensively. Theavahi USE flag brings DNS detection to GNOME (similiar to Rendezvousunder Mac OS X). If you don't want KDE support (the other big desktopenvironment), remove qt3, qt4, arts, and kde.

Code Listing 2.1: Example USE in /etc/make.conf

USE="-qt3 -qt4 -arts -kde X dbus gtk gnome hal avahi"

You can add the branding USE flag to get a lovely Gentoo-brandedsplashscreen instead of the default Gnome splashscreen:

Code Listing 2.2: Enabling Gentoo branding

# echo "gnome-base/gnome-session branding" >> /etc/portage/package.use

Once done, start installing GNOME by emerging gnome:

Code Listing 2.3: Installing GNOME

# emerge gnome

You can also opt for a minimal Gnome installation using gnome-light:

Code Listing 2.4: Installing a minimal GNOME environment

# emerge gnome-light

This will take a while, so you might want to start reading all those books yourmother bought you but you never opened. Done? Great, now update yourenvironment variables:

Code Listing 2.5: Updating environment variables

# env-update && source /etc/profile

If you paid attention to the output of your previous emerge command,you'll notice that it suggests using gamin to have nautilus andgnome-vfs monitor file changes:

Code Listing 2.6: Installing gamin, a file alteration monitor

# emerge gamin

Important: If you are switching from fam (the old, deprecated file monitor) togamin, you will need to remove famd from all runlevels and thenunmerge it:

Code Listing 2.7: Optional: switching to gamin from fam

# rc-update del famd
# emerge --unmerge app-admin/fam

Next we'll clean up the remaining services.

Code Listing 2.8: Adding hald and avahi-dnsconfd to the default runlevel

# /etc/init.d/hald start
# rc-update add hald default

# /etc/init.d/dbus start
# rc-update add dbus default

# /etc/init.d/avahi-dnsconfd start
# rc-update add avahi-dnsconfd default

First Impressions

Let us first take a look at what we just built. Exit your root shell and log onas a regular user. We will configure our session to run GNOME when we issue thestartx command (see alsoUsing startx in theX Server Configuration Howto):

Code Listing 2.9: Having GNOME as default desktop environment

$ echo "exec gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

Now start your graphical environment by running startx:

Code Listing 2.10: Starting GNOME

$ startx

If all goes well, you should be greeted by GNOME. Congratulations. Now let ustake a look at how you can configure GNOME to suit your needs.

3.  Configuring GNOME

GNOME's Graphical Login Manager

If you want the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) to run automatically when you boot(so you can log on graphically), you must add the xdm init script to thedefault runlevel:

Code Listing 3.1: Adding xdm to the default runlevel

# rc-update add xdm default

Now edit /etc/conf.d/xdm and alter the DISPLAYMANAGER variable.

Code Listing 3.2: Editing /etc/conf.d/xdm

DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"

If you reboot now, the GNOME Display Manager will prompt you for your usernameand password and will default to using GNOME as Desktop Environment (even thoughyou will have the option of selecting a different one of course, choosing fromthose available in /usr/share/xsessions/). Thus, if you use GDM,you don't need to edit ~/.xinitrc.

To use the functionality of hald just start gnome-volume-managerand edit its preferences. Also, you'll need to add your user to theplugdev group.

The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

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Updated November 13, 2007

Summary: A frequently used environment is GNOME. This HOWTO tries to describeall aspects of GNOME, including installation, configuration, usage, ...

Sven Vermeulen
Author

Lars Strojny
Editor

Joshua Saddler
Editor

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