GNOME/Guide

The project[edit | edit source]

The GNOME project is a free software organization 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[edit | edit source]

GNOME is a desktop environment and a development platform. This piece of free software is the desktop of choice for several industry leaders including Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat (Red Hat Linux, Fedora, Centos).

The community[edit | edit source]

Like with any large 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.

Profile[edit | edit source]

Before installing the GNOME suite, editing the system's USE variables is a good idea. The Gentoo GNOME project developers provide GNOME profiles in order to aid system-wide tuning for the GNOME software stack. Select the latest stable GNOME profile before emerging GNOME.

USE="-qt5 -kde X gtk gnome systemd"

Emerge[edit | edit source]

Once finished, begin the GNOME installation by emerging GNOME the desktop suite:

This will take a while, so start reading some other parts of our wiki. Done? Great, now update environment variables:

Next the remaining services and user groups will be cleaned.

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

plugdev:x:104:

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

Enabling GDM[edit | edit source]

Using startx[edit | edit source]

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 startx 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 ~/.xinitrc method to start the desktop. If ~/.xinitrc is not being used it will be handled automatically; no additional configuration is needed.

Now start the graphical environment by issuing startx:

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

Mixed localization[edit | edit source]

It could be general to have C as the global default locale, with a different one for the desktop. This can be achieved by add settings:

LANG="zh_CN.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="zh_CN.utf8"
LC_TIME="zh_CN.utf8"

Then choose the region for locale in gnome-setting-center, or via command:

Log out, make sure the old session is killed and re-login, these settings will be applied to the new session.

To override session's locale for terminal in gnome, add:

LANG="C.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="C.utf8" 
LC_TIME="C.utf8"

Tweaking GNOME[edit | edit source]

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

Advanced tweaking[edit | edit source]

Advanced tweaking for GNOME can be performed from the command line via the gsettings or dconf commands or graphically via dconf-editor. All modifiable settings are accessible using these tools. For more information, see upstream's documentation.

Widgets in GNOME 3[edit | edit source]

By default on 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, eselect can be used to control defaults on a global level:

Available extensions (* means enabled for all users by default):
  [1]   alternate-tab@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [2]   apps-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [3]   auto-move-windows@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [4]   drive-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [5]   launch-new-instance@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [6]   native-window-placement@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [7]   places-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [8]   screenshot-window-sizer@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [9]   user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [10]  window-list@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [11]  windowsNavigator@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  [12]  workspace-indicator@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

Enable click-to-install Shell Extensions through the web browser[edit | edit source]

For web browsers such as Google Chrome, Chromium, and Vivaldi be sure to get the required browser add-on through the Chrome store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gphhapmejobijbbhgpjhcjognlahblep

Firefox users can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/gnome-shell-integration/

Opera users will have to snag it here: https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/gnome-shell-integration/

After the add-on has been installed for the browser of choice, a backend must also be emerged:

It should now be possible to install, manage, and uninstall shell extensions at https://extensions.gnome.org/

If things are not working as expected check the upstream installation instructions for news.

Non-root user authentication for dialogs[edit | edit source]

Certain GNOME dialogs such as Printers, adding wireless networks, and Users require administrator authentication. This is handled through sys-auth/polkit and operates independently from app-admin/sudo. By default in Gentoo, the root account is the only administrator, and so even if a user account can run root commands through sudo, authentication in these GNOME dialogs will fail.

If you would like all users of the group wheel to be administrators, create a copy of /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/50-default.rules starting with a number lower than 50, and edit the line return ["unix-user:0"] to the following:

polkit.addAdminRule(function(action, subject) {
    return ["unix-group:wheel"];
});

The Polkit wiki page provides more details on rules configuration.

GNOME Hotspot[edit | edit source]

In order for gnome-hotspot to work, your wireless card must support AP (access point) infrastructure mode. The following package USE flags are also needed:

net-misc/networkmanager connection-sharing
net-wireless/wpa_supplicant ap

In addition, the following kernel options are necessary:

Networking support (NET [=y])
    Networking options --->
        Network packet filtering framework (Netfilter) (NETFILTER [=y]) --->
            IP: Netfilter Configuration --->
                <*/M> IPv4 NAT (CONFIG_NF_NAT_IPv4)
                <*/M> IPv4 masquerade support
                <*/M> IP tables support (required for filtering/masq/NAT) (IP_NF_IPTABLES [=y])
                <*/M> iptables NAT support

Unmerge[edit | edit source]

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

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

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

Unmerge the GNOME base package. Substitute the base package with gnome-base/gnome-light if the 'light' version of the package was installed instead:

Finally, depclean the system:

GNOME should now be removed.

Login failure with message "Oh no something has gone wrong"[edit | edit source]

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 video group. Add the user to the video group with gpasswd like so:

GNOME on Wayland session is not launching with NVIDIA[edit | edit source]

Attempting to launch GNOME on Wayland sessions is a known issue. Unfortunately the NVIDIA binary blob drivers are not presently compatible with Wayland. Systems that simply have the NVIDIA binary blob driver installed, but are not using it can see this workaround.