Arch Linux and Gnome

SMN · 7 Jun 2011 at 08:43

Hi all,

Playing around with Arch this past evening in a VM. I followed the instructions and got everything working, however I was reticent to follow the standard "Gnome Wiki" instructions on the Archwiki as it was referencing Gnome 3 (which i cant stand).

I searched for "GNOME 2" and found a dedicated page, whose instructions i followed and got it working along with GDM etc just fine. However it installed gnome3 anyway! I googled around and looked on the Forums and it turns out Arch wont be supporting gnome2 and keeping packages up to date from herein and only have eyes for GNOME3 as they want to stay "upstream".

This is a bit disappointing as I was quite liking Arch but theres no way I would use Gnome 3 day to day - same goes for Unity.

What are peoples thoughts on Openbox as a replacement for Gnome 2?

Best,
Sam

inSilica · 7 Jun 2011 at 09:50

openbox is descent, needs customising, have you looked at XFCE 4.8? it's light ..., alternatively awesome WM is a nice tiling WM, Whole bunch of how things can look under different WM's here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17590651&page=25

russ0r · 7 Jun 2011 at 09:58

Have you tried GNOME3 fallback? I hear it's pretty much the same as GNOME2.

Openbox is good, but requires far too much customisation to be a replacement for GNOME2 - that is unless you're happy with the endless tweaking! XFCE would be my suggestion.

vidda · 7 Jun 2011 at 11:48

I'd also suggest XFCE

Hairybudda · 7 Jun 2011 at 14:15

I'm not much of a gnome fanboy but there's a dude who's written a fresh walkthrough for people wanting gnome2 today on the forums:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120404

SMN · 11 Jun 2011 at 21:46

Playing with XFCE now, reckon I could get used to this - seems a lot faster (although i still prefer my massively tweaked gnome 2 setup - habit and all that).

Going to have a play with #! now in a VM, see what its like.