Re: How to install Gnome 2.0 ?

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

Btw, this should really just go to gnome-list gnome org, since this list
has been mostly "dead" for quite a few months now (deprecated in favour
of desktop-devel, which is about development and not basic help
questions).

On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 08:51:32AM +0200, Jacob Saaby Nielsen wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I've downloaded the rpm's for SuSE 8, and have tried the following commands:
> 
> rpm -Uvh gtk*.rpm *.rpm
> rpm -Uvh --force gtk*.rpm *.rpm
> rpm -i --force gtk*.rpm *.rpm
> rpm -i --force *.rpm
> 
> No matter WHAT I do, when I login again, it's still Gnome 1.4. What do I 
> need to do
> more ? I thought the rpm's would ensure some form of automatic 
> installation etc. But I
> guess not.

I do not use SuSe, so I will just stik to general hints here -- this
really sounds like a problem for your distribution and not a flaw in
GNOME itself, despite your rant below.

Since you said "log in" rather than "started X", I am assuming that you
are using gdm to start your session. Try something like 'which
gnome-session' from a terminal shell. Does it give you the GNOME 2
version or the GNOME 1 version (try rpm -qf on the resulting file to
see). My suspicion is that you are still getting all of the GNOME 1
applications by default, so you may need to change some paths in, for
example /etc/X11/gdm/*.

> Oh, and if anyone from the Gnome team is reading this: Why isn't there 
> some kind of
> installation guide on YOUR site ?

Umm .. there is. Look at

http://www.gnome.org/start/2.0/releasenotes.html

(which can be found by going to http://www.gnome.org, clicking on the
"GNOME 2 has been released" link near the top of the page and then on
the "Release Notes" link on the page you get next. Some people put a lot
of work into writing those notes to answer installation questions and it
was put in a prominent place.

> And why isn't there one for people who 
> wants to
> compile their own Gnome

Included in the above.

> ... and one for installing the RPM's ?

Because particular RPMs are a distribution-specific thing, just like
.debs and other packaging formats. We cannot hope to cover all of them
in the release notes, since they depend upon distributors having
released packages, which takes them varying amounts of time. Despite
that, the releasse notes do include some guides for people using Debian,
Red Hat or Mandrake and other distributions' users can probably gain
some benefit from those pages as well (since it tells you the
pre-requisites, etc).

>It REALLY 
> stinks that
> there's no official info/guide.
> Sure, there's your FAQ, but what's in 
> there on installing
> Gnome 2.0 for a Linux n00b like me, is utterly useless. In fact I'd say 
> it's pretty much
> useless, period.

I am assuming you are just frustrated with your installation failing to
work right out of the box, so I will ignore this.

> Anyway, if some nice guy would help me out on this, I'd be really 
> grateful. I'd like to
> try Gnome 2.0, but somehow installing this piece of software just isn't 
> supposed to be
> easy at all...

Sarcasm and insulting all the documentation writers is an interesting
approach to requesting help, that's for sure.

Malcolm