The 2 different types of Gnome¶

Installing Gnome is not easy.

Gnome has a lot dependencies, which makes it very tricky to install.

Light version:

emerge -pv gnome-light.

Heavy version:

emerge -pv gnome

which will install evolution

USE flags¶

If you used this pages install guide good, if not things might be a bit different for you.

Always always check your use flags before installing anything. AND after you made a change in the make.conf

First thing you want to do is comment out your USE in the /etc/make.conf
#USE=”“

This next part no one else does, and makes life easier later on.

Picking use flags for someone is like picking out shoes for someone without even knowing them.

There is a cool search tool called beagle, much like OSX’s spotlight. to enable that you must add ‘beagle’ and ‘mono’ to your gnomeuse line.

Two more use flags are ‘cdr’ and ‘dvdr’ you can add them to your system use line, if your cdrom/dvdrom drive supports that function.

‘esd’ Adds support for media-sound/esound (Enlightened Sound Daemon)

‘eds’ Enables support for Evolution-Data-Server

One last use flag: xine

This is a video/audio player which has its own set of use flags, as with anything else -pv and look to see what its going to install if you add this use flag.

Before you commit to the emerge of Gnome you might want to check out the master USE list
During your picking that will help you out a lot!

This USE flag setup is made for ‘gnome’ and will work just fine for ‘gnome-light’

ALL of this goes into your make.conf make sure you get all the ” and spacing right

#-----------------------------
XUSE="truetype X new-login xorg xscreensaver xv xcomposite xinerama opengl aiglx"
IMAGEUSE="jpeg gif tiff png svg pdf"
MEDIAUSE="alsa mad vidix asf win32codecs dvd mp4 aac x264 xvid nsplugin mp3 real gstreamer"
GENERAL="samba java bzip2 symlink sqlite spell xml"
SYSTEM="fam dbus aoss threads gudev hwdb cdda gdu"
NOTUSE=""
KDEUSE="-kde -arts -qt3 -qt4"
GNOMEUSE="gtk cairo glitz gnome cups policykit consolekit"

USE="${NOTUSE} ${SYSTEM} ${GENERAL} ${IMAGEUSE} ${XUSE} ${KDEUSE} ${MEDIAUSE} ${GNOMEUSE}"
#------------------------------

Emerge of Gnome¶

SETUP YOUR USE FLAGS NOW

1: edit your /etc/make.conf to the first green sections listings

2: emerge -pv gnome-light OR gnome

3: LOOK and review your use flags

4: Remove or add to /etc/make.conf

5: Repeat step 2

6: emerge gnome-light OR gnome

7: goto bed or take a very long nap

The amount of time it will take is all based on YOUR computer and YOUR use flags.

As noted before ‘gnome-light’ will be much quicker then ‘gnome’

Over time you will get use to installing applications in Gentoo.
Gentoo gives you a lot of choices, which the other distribution’s do not give you.

ALWAYS check your use flags before you install anything.

Final setup¶

YOU need to make your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
One way is to run: xorgcfg
You can read this guide

Once your done with that, go back and go though the xorg.conf to make sure everything is ok
I will have an xorg.conf guide on this site.. all in time.

emerge alsa-utils

rc-update add alsasound default
rc-update add dbus default
rc-update add xdm default

gpasswd -a YOURUSERNAME plugdev

Now just set your login manager to gdm

nano /etc/conf.d/xdm

and change to:

DISPLAYMANAGER=gdm"

reboot

This guide isn’t 100% its just a simple guide to help you along in the right direction thats all.