GNOME First Steps

GNOME 3 is an easy and elegant way to use your computer. It is designed to put you in control and bring freedom to everybody. GNOME 3 is developed by the GNOME community, a diverse, international group of contributors that is supported by an independent, non-profit foundation. GNOME

Prerequisites

Before attempting to emerge Gnome, make sure that you have installed and tested the X Window System on your computer.

Preparing to emerge

After verifying that you have installed the X Window system on your computer, change your system flavor to desktop, and enable the gnome profile mix-in. To accomplish this, run the following:

root # epro flavor desktop
root # epro mix-ins +gnome

By enabling the gnome mix-in, various settings, including the USE portage variable, will be optimized to provide you with a relatively painless Gnome install.

Optional Wayland Support

With release-1.3, it is now possible to use Wayland instead of X as your display technology. If you would like to enable this -- it is optional -- you must also run the following command:

root # epro mix-ins +wayland

   Warning

While wayland is supported in Funtoo, wayland itself is not considered to be mature and most people will experience better results using X rather than wayland.

When using Wayland, if you are using nvidia-drivers, you must manually enable NVIDIA's own KMS by adding the following to your params in /etc/boot.conf: nvidia-drm.modeset=1. KMS must be enabled manually when using nvidia-drivers.

X or Wayland

You will want to make sure you run etc-update or dispatch-conf to update your configuration files after everything emerges. In particular, take a look at /etc/gdm/custom.conf and ensure that the following setting is configured to match whether or not you are running Wayland. This controls whether or not gdm runs using Wayland. If gdm starts in Wayland, then it is able to launch either X or Wayland sessions. If Wayland is disabled in gdm, then it will only be able to start X sessions.

   /etc/gdm/custom.conf

[daemon]
WaylandEnable=true

Emerging

The Funtoo Linux repositories include two ebuild "meta packages" that can be used to install Gnome. One of them, gnome-light installs a bare-bones gnome desktop with few "extra" applications and games that can be found in the gnome-extra and games-* portage categories, respectively. If you are interested in having a Gnome desktop with extra applications like a photo viewer, text editor, sound player, font viewer, etc, immediately after installing the Gnome packages, consider emerging the gnome package instead of gnome-light.

   Note

Individual Gnome applications can be installed on top of a gnome-light installation, allowing you to only install the applications you need and limit unnecessary bloat.

Below are two lists comparing some of the different packages installed by default with a gnome-light and gnome installation:

gnome-light	gnome
Includes: gnome-terminal nautilus (the default Gnome file manager) gnome-shell (can be removed using the -gnome-shell USE flag at installation) gnome-control-center	Includes: gnome-terminal nautilus gnome-shell gnome-control-center gnome-contacts eog (an image viewing application) gnome-weather gnome-maps ... and many other applications.
Best for: Users who want a smaller installation that uses less disk space Users who are comfortable installing additional packages that they require when the need arises	Best for: Users who want a full-featured Gnome desktop right after installation Users who don't mind extra resources being used by additional applications installed on the system
How to install: emerge gnome-light	How to install: emerge gnome

The steps that should be followed to emerge GNOME are as follows:

root # emerge -auDN @world
root # emerge gnome

A few finishing touches

Proprietary NVIDIA drivers

While many video drivers (those that are part of xorg-x11) do not require users to be part of the video group for hardware acceleration, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers definitely do require this. Please make sure that any non-root user is part of the video group, and ensure that Nouveau kernel modules are blacklisted. Setup steps for proprietary NVIDIA drivers can be found on the the NVIDIA Linux Display Drivers page.

Other Graphics Drivers

Users of other graphics drivers typically don't need to perform any steps other than ensure that the correct gfxcard- mix-in is enabled and the system is updated (via emerge -auDN @world to ensure that this support is active. See the Graphics Settings portion of the Installation documentation for more information on the different mix-ins available.

Setting up xdm (GUI log-in)

Most users of Gnome are satisfied using gdm, the Gnome display manager, to log in to Gnome. To clarify: a display manager provides a graphical interface during system startup that allows users to log in to a desktop environment.

By default, GNOME displays the /etc/motd file for several seconds after you log in via GDM. The best way to eliminate this delay is to remove the unnecessary /etc/motd file, which only contains information related to when your stage3 was built:

root # rm /etc/motd

By default, after installing GNOME by hand, GDM is not enabled (it will be, however, if you used a GNOME stage3.) To enable GDM, edit /etc/conf.d/xdm and set the DISPLAYMANAGER variable to gdm instead of the default, xdm. When finished, your /etc/conf.d/xdm file should look like:

   /etc/conf.d/xdm

# We always try and start X on a static VT. The various DMs normally default
# to using VT7. If you wish to use the xdm init script, then you should ensure
# that the VT checked is the same VT your DM wants to use. We do this check to
# ensure that you haven't accidentally configured something to run on the VT
# in your /etc/inittab file so that you don't get a dead keyboard.
CHECKVT=7

# What display manager do you use ?
# NOTE: If this is set in /etc/rc.conf, that setting will override this one.
DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"

Once you finish configuring that file, add the xdm service to the default runlevel so that GDM will start automatically when your system has finished loading other services. xdm need dbus service started before. To achieve this:

root # rc-update add dbus default
root # rc-update add elogind default

Above command adds dbus to list of services to be started at boot. At this point, you are encouraged to reboot your system to get system services initialized in the proper state, and to ensure that any newly-rebuilt services are running:

root # reboot

After the system reboots, log in and start the xdm service:

root # /etc/init.d/xdm start

Hopefully, all goes well and you see a graphical login screen. If you would like xdm to start automatically at boot, you can add it to your default runlevel as follows:

root # rc-update add xdm default

Setting up xinitrc (text-based log-in)

If, instead of using a display manager like GDM, you would rather log into the console and start Gnome with startx :

Configure openrc to autostart dbus and elogind:

root # rc-update add dbus default
root # rc-update add elogind default

Add the following to your ~/.xinitrc file:

   ~/.xinitrc

# Fix Missing Applications in Gnome
export XDG_MENU_PREFIX=gnome-

# Properly Launch the Desired X Session
exec gnome-session

   Note

If you need support for different input sources, there is no longer a need to configure IBus or SCIM in your ~.xinitrc file as GNOME uses IBus natively. Simply configure it in the Gnome Control Center under the Region & Language section.

Upgrading from older Gnome releases

To update either gnome-light or gnome to a newer version, run the following command:

root # emerge -vauDN world

Subsystems

Bluetooth

For bluetooth support under Gnome, ensure that:

1. Bluetooth support is enabled within your kernel (using modules is fine).
2. Your bluetooth hardware is turned on.
3. Your user is in the plugdev group.

After ensuring those two things, the bluetooth startup script can be added to the default runlevel and started:

root # rc-update add bluetooth default
root # rc

Once the rc command has been run, the bluetooth init file has been run, meaning that you should now be able to navigate to the Gnome Control Center's Bluetooth section to turn bluetooth on. The icon next to devices should now animate and you should be able to discover and add devices such as bluetooth keyboards and mice.

   Note

Additional kernel drivers may be necessary for certain input devices. For example, for the bluetooth Apple Magic Trackpad, the following option must be enabled in your kernel:

Under Device Drivers-->HID support-->HID bus support-->Special HID drivers:

<M> Apple Magic Mouse/Trackpad multi-touch support

Printing

To enable printing support, add the cupsd init file to the default runlevel and then start the cupsd service by running the rc command:

root # rc-update add cupsd default
root # rc

You should now be able to navigate to the Gnome Control Center's Printers sections and add printers to your system. After adding printers to your system, you should, hopefully, be able to print to them. If you have troubles with the default printer drivers, consider reading

Scanning

To enable scanning support, add your user account (and the accounts of any other users who may need to scan) to the lp group. By adding your user account to this group, you will have access to any locally attached scanner:

root # gpasswd -a <username> lp

After adding yourself and any other desired users to the lp local printing group, install xsane, a graphical scanning frontend, by running the following command:

root # emerge xsane

When you run xsane, it should be able to access your scanner.

Automatically Starting Applications at Login

When using an old-fashioned Template:~/.xinitrc, loading applications when X starts is relatively easy, simply add different applications to launch on separate lines in the file. When using GDM, this can also be accomplished with ease by editing the ~/.xprofile file. Here is a sample ~/.xprofile that runs the xflux application to dim a computer's monitor at night:

   ~/.xprofile

xflux -z 87107

   Note

Remember to add an & at the end of any command that doesn't return directly to the shell prompt after running.

Games

Gnome has a plethora of games that can be added to your installation of either gnome-light or gnome. By default, the majority of Gnome games are not included in the gnome and gnome-light packages. If you are interested in playing games under Gnome, or for that matter, any other desktop environment, you will want to add your user account to the games group. This can be accomplished easily by running the following command:

root # gpasswd -a $USER games

The above command appends games to the list of groups that you are already a member of. Once your user account has been added to the games group, you should log out and log back in to apply the changes to your user at log-in. Below is a list of games that were developed by the Gnome team with the Gnome desktop environment in mind:

• gnome-sudoku
• gnome-mastermind
• gnome-nibbles
• gnome-robots
• gnome-chess
• gnome-hearts
• gnome-mahjongg
• gnome-mines
• gnome-klotski
• gnome-tetravex

To install any of the above games, simply run an:

root # emerge <gamename>