I'm wondering whether or not I should even pursue a Gnome 3 installation? One problem I have with tab window manager is that I don't know how to fire it up at boot. Another problem, I don't like having a login terminal. I prefer to Exit using the window manager. If I click Exit now, I end up in X without a window manager.
I think Dirk Dashing requires Gnome or KDE. I am not set up for KDE. Since this is an NFS root system intended for backing up and restoring machines, I will only run a demo copy of Dirk Dashing. One thing I know for certain, I need 32 bit libraries to run Dirk Dashing. I don't remember which ones, but I think pulseaudio and SDL are on the list. How do I compile 32 bit compatibility libraries on a 64 bit system? A concern I have with running Gnome is that it may be too much for a Linux system that is running off a 100 mb/s network line without swap. The LFS 7.1 book didn't talk about initial ram disks. I can probably assume safely that 64 bit computers have more than 1 gigabyte of RAM. I should be able to fit the root filesystem into that. Currently, I'm looking at copying the root filesystem 3-4 times on the NFS server. If only I can pass the root filesystem as an initial ram disk along with the files that need to be customized to the computer that is being network booted. The space savings will be a plus and running via ram disk instead of NFS root will boost performance. Not having to copy the whole root filesystem, that scales better. I have firefox running under TWM, but the fonts are ugly and getting windows sized comfortably is a bit of a pain compared to what I'm used to. I can't get dbus-python-1.1.1 to pass all tests which is mentioned in detail in another post. One last issue, some of the system documentation is in PDF format. I may need gnome to run a PDF reader, especially if I run say Acrobat Reader. Obviously, Dirk Dashing isn't a priority. It's a plus perhaps if I end up needing gnome and it is practical for my setup. Having X, Qt, Gtk+, and TWM is a good start at least. -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
