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boots · Dec 19, 2001, 10:07 AM

Ok, flame me for being lazy and not doing my research, but I was curious and pressed for time.

I've seen a lot in these fora that hints at this super something-or-other known as GNOME. One problem I've encountered as a new-to-the-unix-world person is that it is assumed that everyone knows what these well established programs are. At first, I thought GNOME was a window manager. Now, I see a number of programs that require gnome components to compile/run, but that are reported to run under managers like sawfish and windowmaker.

So, the question: What is GNOME and why is is so great?

Are there any other super apps that we "unix voyeurs" should know about?
(Other people curious about apps, but don't know where to find the info / were afraid to ask?)

BTW Thanks to the unix community in general for being so patient with we, the uninitiated. It seems that the only way to learn is to ask stupid questions, and y'all have been very gracious about the stupidity level of many of my questions.

Jelle Monkmater · Dec 19, 2001, 11:32 AM

Not that I'm an expert on what it is exactly, but here's an approximation: GNOME is a CDE, or Common Desktop Environment -- a GUI for the UNIX side of things much like Aqua, with the difference that GNOME needs something called X11, which makes it possible for a GUI to exist on top of the UNIX layer.

So you have UNIX with on top of that X11 (often XFree86 -- you might have heard of it), on top of that sits GNOME, and on top of that sits the Window Manager that determines the look and feel of the windows inside of the CDE.

At least, that's how I understand it to be, but I'm one of those people who are happy to get those things running, so there might be one or two things that can be added.

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: Jelle Monkmater ]

boots · Dec 19, 2001, 02:51 PM

Thanks, jelle. After I saw your post, I went and found one of the resident experts who showed me how gnome was running on his machine. Nice!

Does anyone know if you can run totally from X11/Gnome/window manager (i.e. no apple gui in-between or behind)? Could you, for example, set a user up so that he doesn't have the finder, but gets dumped into GNOME directly?

Angus_D · Dec 19, 2001, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>Does anyone know if you can run totally from X11/Gnome/window manager (i.e. no apple gui in-between or behind)? Could you, for example, set a user up so that he doesn't have the finder, but gets dumped into GNOME directly?</STRONG>

Yes, you could, but what's the point in having OS X then? Get Linux or GNU-Darwin or something free. Have fun.

brachiator · Dec 19, 2001, 08:36 PM

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>Thanks, jelle. After I saw your post, I went and found one of the resident experts who showed me how gnome was running on his machine. Nice!

Does anyone know if you can run totally from X11/Gnome/window manager (i.e. no apple gui in-between or behind)? Could you, for example, set a user up so that he doesn't have the finder, but gets dumped into GNOME directly?</STRONG>

YOu could, in theory. You'd just run the window manager (sawfish is the default) on top of the Darwin installation (no idea how to turn "off" Aqua, and just run GNOME, but to think aobut just installing Darwin 1.4.1 or wherever it is on a separate partition or in place of OSX altogether... BTW, Darwin is the UNIX base of OSX, on top of which Aqua,etc., run...J) Check at the FInk, GNU-Darwin, and xdarwin sites...

My understanding is that GNOME runs atop Sawfish (or whatever window manager) which in turn runs atop Darwin/UNIX/Linux, etc. The window manager is what enables the X11 environment to display the windows graphically -- the default in Xfree is twm, which Sawfish, etc., replace. GNOME expands the environment into what we recognize as a desktop environment with app switching, etc.

Taken together, the window manager and GNOME (or another of the CDE's) are analogous to Aqua, with the common base (in the Mac system) being Darwin, the UNIX core.

You can check out www.gnome.org, too.

CharlesS · Dec 19, 2001, 11:27 PM

To turn off Aqua, you would edit the rc files and comment out the lines that start SystemStarter, the Window Server, etc.

But like someone else said, what's the point of having Mac OS X then? Linux seems like a better choice for what you want to do.

boots · Dec 20, 2001, 09:52 AM

I'm actually not wanting to do that system wide. I would only want to do that for my user account. The others in the house (I live with 4 graduate students) need all the other stuff. An I do occasionally use regular software built for apple. If I wanted it system wide, I probably would just install darwin. I'm toying with the idea of doing that on my laptop anyway.

I suppose I could write a start up script that launches everything, but the performance would most likely suck as aqua would still be sucking cycles. Maybe not though. I'll have to think about this some more.

Thanks for the input.

utidjian · Dec 20, 2001, 09:05 PM

Well you could run Linux... and just run the apps you need in MOL on a virtual screen. You get all the speed an stability of Linux (and the apps)... and you can run OS-9.x apps at better speed that Classic on OS-X on the same hardware. As they say, it is a win-win situation (no pun intended).

-DU-...etc...

graffix · Dec 23, 2001, 04:31 PM

If you want to start the Darwin environment without the Aqua interface, simply type '>console' (without the '') at the login window and you'll be dropped down to the command-prompt without the UI. Now you can login as your normal user account, and then type 'startx' to get your Darwin/Xfree86 environment up and running without Aqua.
cheers.
g.