5.5. GNOME Installation and Configuration

The GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) is a windowing environment that enhances your X window environment. It is full-featured, including a large selection of applications you may find useful. However, at the time of this writing, GNOME still has a few minor bugs, meaning you may have to put up with errant behaviour at times. However, it is fairly stable and definitely usable!

If you're using Red Hat 6.1, the latest version of GNOME (at least, the latest at the time of this writing!) is included with the distribution. Otherwise, you will need to download the latest RPM distribution of the package. At the time of this writing, the RPM files for Red Hat 6.0 i386 systems can be found at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/RHAD/redhat-6.0/i386/ (or from a mirror site).

Note: If you're using Red Hat 6.0, you should be aware that it was shipped with a fairly buggy version of GNOME. You should download the latest RPM's from the FTP site as described above.

After you have all the necessary files, the GNOME package can be installed with a simple command, typed as "root":

rpm -Uvh gtk*.rpm *.rpm

(The above command ensures the GTK libraries are installed first, to avoid dependency errors from occurring).

Contrary to popular belief, GNOME is actually not a Window manager, but instead sits on top of your favorite one, providing added functionality to it. Therefore, once you have installed GNOME, you should decide which window manager you wish to use, and create a ``.xinitrc'' file in your directory which loads the appropriate window manager and starts GNOME. The file should look something like this:

afterstep &
exec gnome-session

The above file will load AfterStep for the window manager, and then run GNOME on top of it.

More information on the GNU Network Object Model Environment can be found on the GNOME web page at http://www.gnome.org/. Don't forget to check out the screen shots, located at http://www.gnome.org/screenshots/.