Gnome3

[John Marino]

On 7/3/2017 08:48, Bryan C. Everly wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I appreciate the help and patience of folks here as I ask a seemingly
> long list of n00b questions!  Sorry if I'm being annoying in my
> enthusiasm to get things configured where I'd like them.  Anyhow...
>
> I tried to get Gnome3 up and running and it appeared to me to be
> behaving badly.  I added the:
>
> hald_enable="YES"
> dbus_enable="YES"
> gdm_enable="YES"
> gnome_enable="YES"
>
> used pkg install to install xorg and gnome3 (turned out I had to
> install openssl first in order to get things working - perhaps the
> gnome port is linked against this and the rest of the OS is linked
> against the far superior and wonderful... sorry, my OpenBSD propaganda
> kicked in... libressl?)
>
> Anyhow, the behavior I saw was a black screen instead of gdm running,
> so I figured, let's rock it old school and start gnome shell from my
> .xinitrc (exec gnome-shell) by running startx from my regular user
> account.  What I saw then was the standard "oh no, something went
> wrong" screen that I typically associate with trying to run gnome3 on
> a system without X acceleration (this is why I have to run xfce4 on my
> Thinkpad X1 Carbon Skylake on OpenBSD - we don't have drm support for
> that chipset... yet).
>
> To that end, I double-checked /var/log/Xorg.log.0 and from my naive
> eyes, it sure looks like I'm running with the right driver (snippet
> below):
>
> [    31.303]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 20.0
> [    31.303] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Chipsets:
>         i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G,
>         915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM,
>         Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33,
>         GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43
> [    31.303] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) HD Graphics
> [    31.303] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics
> [    31.303] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Pro Graphics
> [    31.303] (--) Using syscons driver with X support (version 2.0)
> [    31.303] (--) using VT number 2
>
> [    35.319] (II) intel(0): Using Kernel Mode Setting driver: i915, version 1.6.
> 0 20160229
> [    35.319] (WW) VGA arbiter: cannot open kernel arbiter, no multi-card support
> [    35.319] (--) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) HD Graphics 40
> 00
> [    35.319] (--) intel(0): CPU: x86-64, sse2, sse3, ssse3, sse4.1, sse4.2, avx;
>  using a maximum of 2 threads
> [    35.319] (==) intel(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
>
> Anyhow, I know that Gnome3 is a pain in the a$$ on BSDs because of all
> of the nasty systemd stuff that is creeping in and my ability to use
> it is probably not long for this world (which is why I'm trying to
> move to Lumina as I can) but if anyone is successfully running a
> Gnome3 desktop environment with GDM on DragonFlyBSD I'd love to
> understand the secret FU you did just so I can hang on for a few more
> months!
>
> I ended up punting and going old school with xdm and xfce4 in the
> meanwhile until I can get Lumina tweaked the way I like it FWIW.
>
> Thanks in advance for the help and sorry to be so darned long-winded.


Honestly, all I know is that gnome3 builds.  It's never been clear if it 
actually works.  I don't recall anyone saying they use it and it works 
well. tbh, I would be surprised if it did.

Another desktop (like xfce4 or Lumina) would likely be the way to go, 
especially for a self-described newbie.

John