Re: Gnome

["David Lord" <netbsd%lordynet.org@localhost>]

On 24 Aug 2009 at 18:26, Arthur Barlow wrote:

> I know I'm foolish to even attempt this, but I thought I'd try and see is I
> could run Gnome on NetBSD.  So far, no luck.  I have done a "make install"
> in /usr/pkgsrc/meta-pkgs/gnome2, and it appears that all packages,
> (ridiculous amounts as only Gnome can), are built.  I've set my ".xinitrc"
> file to "exec /usr/pkg/bin/gnome-session."  I cannot find a correct syntax
> to launch dbus from rc.conf, though I've tried "dbus-launch=YES", which
> appears to do nothing.  Even if I manually start dbus-launch from root, when
> I try to run startx with the above mentioned .xinitrc file I get an error,
> "CRITICAL: dbus_g_connection_get_connection: assertion 'gconnection'
> failed."
> I don't know if I need "devd" or "hald" somehow loaded at boot up time, but
> I would appreciate any guidance.  Thanks
> 
> P.S. I'm using NetBSD 5.0 on an Athlon Duron MSI motherboard.


I have three notebooks and two desktops running NetBSD including
gnome. Not everything works on all of them, usually problems with
sound even though it may have worked on same system with earlier
version of NetBSD. All use i386 build although one desktop is amd. 
The systems also have Ubuntu 9.04 and issues with sound are same.
I don't have video recording working yet but playing video works
ok. I'm not sure I have dbus working properly either. There are
a few packages I use on each O/S that aren't available or don't
work too well on other O/S. Minimum system is a 366MHz 384MB ram
Dell notebook and sound no longer works from either O/S but was
ok from NetBSD-3 but gnome didn't seem a possibility then.


Getting there wasn't easy and Gnome is a moving target.

I'd suggest you first try from packages rather than building from
source. I have a p4-2666 for building for NetBSD-5 and p4-2400 for
3.x and 4.x but generally upgrading the lot to 5.x. Other systems
then install binary packages from the two build systems. Currently
package count on NetBSD-5.0.1 is at 1080 although that includes
packages used on the servers.

David