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Linux install gnome from text based system

B

Brazen

Diamond Member
I'm somewhat of a newbie at linux, so I need some simple instructions. This is mostly because I'm curious as to how it is done and too learn more about how linux works.

First off, I did a minimal install on a box with two nics and learned how to use iptables as a firewall/router. Very nice. Now I would like to add on a graphical desktop instead of just the black and white command line interface.

I like the nightly update feature of yum, so I'm trying to stick with using yum for all installations. Anyway, I did a yum install gnome-desktop figuring that would take care of everything, but it didn't. After reading around, I think I also need a desktop manager, so I also did yum install gdm. It still boots to the command line interface. Do I have to manually add something to a startup file or what?

Again, I would like to know how to do a completely vanilla install of gnome or kde. For now I don't want to bother with anything extra like firefox and openoffice, just the basic packages that are a part of gnome or kde. Also, do I have to have a desktop manager? I just want to boot straight in to one desktop or the either, I don't care about switching between both on one system. Also, just to be clear, I know I can reinstall from the CDs and choose add gnome to the installation (that is the answer I found on another site) but I would really like to know how to do this myself to an existing system. Thanks
 
If I may suggest, Slackware is much better for learning about how stuff works. It's a lot more barebones than most distros, and automatic configuration is at a minimum, so nothing gets in your way.

But anyway, to answer your question. Putting together GNOME is perhaps the most gargantuan task we have. Although the dependencies aren't circular, there are so many individual packages to deal with. KDE, by comparison, is a mostly monolithic install and consequently much easier. I think there's a singular build script.

And to clairfy the organization of how a desktop is presented: The X server handles the actual windows themselves, but you need a window manager to do things you're accustomed to doing with a GUI, like move them around, minimize, and so on. The window manager you choose is determined by what features (and what eye candy) you want, and what kind of memory footprint you will tolerate. A step above this is the desktop environment, such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and (whenever it's done) Enlightenment 17; the desktop environment usually provides varying levels of its own apps and integrates them to some extent. Some DE use their own window manager (KDE), while others will generally use any that are aware of the presence of the DE (GNOME).
 
Like bersl2 said, it's not so easy so if you just want *A* desktop environment --as opposed to Gnome specifically-- then maybe you want to consider KDE.

But here is a link if you want to try it. A bit of a beginner myself, I installed FC3 sans-Gnome and tried to use the link to set up Gnome 2.8. I hosed my system (while trying to install something else) during the attempt and haven't tried it again yet.

http://beau.org/pipermail/whitebox-users/2005-January/005378.html
 
Ok, I don't have a problem switching to KDE. After reading around on the net (and checking out some screenshots), it looks like KDE is what I would want anyway.

I went ahead and reloaded with another minimal install. I am still going with Fedora. It just seems to me like it is the most popular and has the most support on the web.

So what do I need to get to a basic KDE gui desktop? Can I just "yum install kde-base"? Or, keeping in mind yum will resolve dependancies, is there some other package I must ahve? Do I even need kde-base? Like I said before, I want to do things manually, but I would still perfer to go through yum particularly due to the nightly updating feature.
 
So, after reading the installation guide on kde.org, I ran "yum install kdebase" and double-checked which package dependancies were installed and saw that arts, kdelibs, and qt were all going to be automatically installed, among others, which is what the installation guide said were required.

I tried startkde as the documentation guide said and only got a bunch of errors like "could not start display" and "could not connect to xserver." Startkde is the command the install guide said ran a script to startup kde but it didn't work. So then I tried startx as mentioned above and that did work. I did, by the way, have to log in with the regular text-based login screen before I could run these commands of course.

I guess the next thing I need to know is how to have a gui login screen and how to start kde automatically. Can kde handle the login screen and I just need to enable it, or is there some other program I must install to get a gui login?
 
I found an article on install a desktop on Slackware. Apparently, I have to edit the /etc/inittab file and change id:3:initdefault to id:4:initdefault (id:5:initdefault on Fedora) to automatically start xdm, gdm, or kdm, which as I understand kdm is installed with kde. I'm going to see how this work, but I still don't like it that I couldn't get the lates kde from yum nor do I like the redhat branding - if kde meant for a K to be there, then I want a K, not a red Fedora.

I'm going to see how this edit works and then regardless I think I'm going to switch to Slackware and compile the latest version of KDE myself. However, I'm guessing Slackware has yet to implement SELinux (am I wrong?) which is something I was happy to see supported in Fedora. Any help on compiling my own junk would be greatly appreciated.

...

update: I was playing with this stuff on my laptop and dual booting between Windows and Fedora. I'm not too comfortable with Slackware's partitioning software and things have gotten kinda busy at work anyway. I think when things slow down, I'll try out Slackware on a spare box. For now, I did try out KDE on Fedora, installing it though the Anaconda setup. I do like it better than gnome, although I wish Kontact could be configured to layout more like Evolution (which has a layout similar to Outlook 2003), although I like using Kontact better than Evolution (I think it looks better with nicer icons and smoother edges, what can I say, I'm vain).
 
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