Gnome 2 and Debian Woody - Any sucess stories?

[trilarian]

I finally got Debian up and configured except for scsi emulation, but that will be another post and another time. Anyway, I tried adding the gnome2 mirror's to my sources.list and doing apt-get update, apt-get install gnome2 gdm2. Also tried running dselect and getting everything with gnome2 on it. After everything installs I don't have the gnome-sessions file to start gnome2. I spent considerable time trying to compile the source I got with apt-get source gnome-session with no success. I finally removed all packages and got gnome 1.4 back up and running. Has anyone sucessfully installed gnome2 on debian woody? If you have can you post how you did and remember I've only been on debian for about 20 hours now.
Thx.

[Joe_Atlanta]

Another noob here, but from what I understand you may have to add the Debian "Sid" servers to your source list to get Gnome 2.

If you don't get a definitive answer here, you might want to try the Libranet forums (http://libranetlinux.com/forum/phpBB2/index.php) (there's folks there who have updated Libra 2.0) or the Extreme Tech linux help forum (http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=messages), a lot of the regulars are debheads.

BTW, congrats on the Deb install. I took the easy way out and used Libra 2.0 essentials (I had heard from a guy in my mobo forum that it detected and set up our motherboard and peripherals well). XAdminmenu made hardware setup very easy.

[raz0rblade]

i got it working, sorta ....

i ran apt-get install gnome gdm2 to install it enabled gdm2 in the following setup screens, restart X went into gnome 2 but fluxbox loaded and about 10 seconds later gnome 2 loaded on top of it. Then i went to the windows manager list on fluxbox clicked one of the option (dont remember which) and metacity loaded. none of cp's work but i use kde anyways ;)

[raz0rblade]

success story ! :) im not running gnome 2 as a normal user and no errors:) took a bit of tweaking but everything is good now.

[Saptech]

I read there were problems with some files using Gnome 2 and Debian (Woody) on Debianplanet.org!

"Christian Marillat has issued a serious warning to Gnome 2 users on debian-gtk-gnome. If you haven't done it yet, DON'T upgrade bonobo-activation and libbonobo-activation* to the latest version in sid (2.1.0)! You won't be able to start a Gnome session anymore.

To date, no fixed packages are available, so if it already has bitten you, the only solution is to downgrade to version 1.0.3"...

Here's the link (http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2002/debian-gtk-gnome-200211/msg00242.html) with more details.

[trilarian]

Thanks Saptech....that is exactly what happened to me....gnome-session disappeared. I downgraded to 1.4 and will be patient for a fix. Thx again.

[Joe_Atlanta]

According to http://debianplanet.org/ the Gnome breakage has been fixed. :cool:

[trilarian]

After all the hell I went through to get 1.4 back up I will wait until someone does it successfully and can give me a quick howto. I still have other bugs to work out that will occupy my time. And I am also running Woody and don't want to goto Sid. The reason I dropped Mandrake was the incosistancies, rpms, and instability in the always on sense. I like to leave for vacation come back home two weeks later, move my mouse and everything is where I left it. The whole "experimental" thing would make me not like debian after a few unwarranted crashes.

[Joe_Atlanta]

CC on that stability thing.
It's easy to get in trouble with apt-get and unstable/testing software. I've already had to do an uninstall and purge of Gnome after breaking it. So, I've gone back to just Woody until (or if) I buy Libranet 2.7. I don't mind paying someone else to beta test Gnome 2.0 and KDE 3.03 for me.

For the time being, Libra 2.0 works great for me and I don't really need the latest and greatest GUI to learn the basics. As a newbie, I've found it's easy enough to hose your OS while learning to tweak, best for me to be learning on a stable sysem.

[firemoth]

I got gnome 2 running on woody using people.debian.org/~kov's backport from sid. All is well, except for 1 problem, seen here.

http://linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82533