GNOME/Guide

GNOME is a popular desktop environment. This guide tries to describe all aspects of GNOME, including installation, configuration, usage, and more!

The project
The GNOME project is a free software project dedicated to the development of GNOME, a Unix/Linux desktop suite and development platform. The GNOME Foundation coordinates the development and other aspects of the GNOME Project.

The software
GNOME is a desktop environment and a development platform. This piece of free software is the desktop of choice for several industry leaders. It is interesting both for business users, home users, and developers.

The community
Like with any big free software project, GNOME has an extensive user and development base. GNOME Planet is a popular blog aggregator for GNOME hackers and contributors whereas developer.gnome.org is for the GNOME developers. GNOME Library contains a huge list of GNOME resources for end users. The WOGUE is also a popular aggregator for GNOME-related news.

Prerequisites
Before the GNOME install process, first read and follow the instructions in the Xorg guide to setup a X environment. X is the standard base for all desktop environments in Linux.

Installation
Before installing GNOME, editing the system's USE variables is a good idea. Make sure that,  , and   are in the USE variable located in. It is recommended to enable support for D-Bus system-wide by adding  to the USE variable as well (D-Bus is a system message bus that GNOME uses extensively). If no KDE support is required, remove,   and   from USE. USE flags can be removed by adding a minus sign in front of them. See the example below for the minus sign used properly.

Adding the  USE flag provides a lovely Gentoo-branded splash screen instead of the default GNOME splash screen:

Once finished, begin the GNOME installation by emerging GNOME:

For a minimal GNOME installation install the package. This option provides a lightweight GNOME installation without pulling in the full GNOME desktop environment. Most people may need to install additional packages afterwards.

This will take a while, so start reading some books. Done? Great, now update environment variables:

Next the remaining services and user groups will be cleaned.

Verify the  group exists. If it does, it is advisable to make each GNOME user member of that group, but step this is optional (the group is not common anymore).

Substitute  in the next command with each GNOME user's user name:

First impressions
It is time to take a look at what was just built. Either configure the session manager to run GNOME when the the command is invoked (see using startx in the Xorg guide for more information), or enable the GDM service, for a more convenient way to start Gnome.

Systemd
To start GDM upon boot:

To start GDM immediatly, run:

Another suggestion is to activate Network Manager, in case no other network managing service is activated.

OpenRC
OpenRC provides a script, XDM, to start up display managers. The following edit will set GDM as the default display manager:

To start GDM on boot, add the XDM init script to the system's default runlevel:

To start GDM immediately, run:

Again, a good suggestion is to activate Network Manager, in case no other network managing service is activated.

Using startx
Exit the root shell and log in as a regular user. The next step is to configure the session manager to run GNOME when the the command is invoked (see using startx in the Xorg guide for more information).

Starting with gnome-base/gnome-session-2.26.2, users will need to prepend the XDG_MENU_PREFIX variable to get the GNOME menus when using the method to start the desktop. If is not being used it will be handled automatically; no additional configuration is needed.

Now start the graphical environment by issuing :

If all goes well GNOME should happily provide a greeting. Congratulations on setting up GNOME!

Customizing Gnome
For extra configuration options in GNOME 3 install the package. The tweak tool allows customization at a deeper level than the standard Settings frame.

Widgets in GNOME 3
By default in Gentoo Gnome 3 does not support widgets. For users who wish to obtain widget functionality a separate package is available:

After the Shell Extensions are installed, can be used to control defaults on a global level:

Unmerge
A possible way to completely remove a GNOME installation is by explicitly uninstalling the package, then cleaning the dependencies of that package.

In order to do this sanely make sure the main Portage repository has been synced:

Next, run a world update so that the system is fully up-to-date:

Unmerge the GNOME base package:

Finally, depclean the system:

GNOME should now be removed.

Oh no something has gone wrong
One source of this error can be the permissions for the video device. When logging in fails and a message appears that says "Oh no, something has gone wrong", then try to become a member of the group. Add the user to the video group with like so:

External resources

 * https://plus.google.com/+WorldofGnomeOrg - The World of GNOME Google+ page.


 * https://github.com/dantrell/gentoo-project-gnome-without-systemd - GNOME without Systemd