27 replies to this topic

[raymac46]

I thought I'd like to continue kicking the tires on Gnome 3 shell in VBox but it's getting hard to find pure unadulterated Gnome 3 out there. Both Ubuntu and Linux Mint have forked Gnome 3 and have their own custom DEs.
I tried a couple of unfamiliar distros out. I started with Kororaa which is Fedora with extra codecs, but I could not install in Vbox as the installer kept crashing. Then I tried Fedora 17 but had trouble getting it to update. In both cases getting the Guest Additions installed was a real PITA. So I tried adding Gnome to my Mageia 2 install and ended up with a very messy bloat that didn't run well in VBox.
Now I'm going to go back to basics and install Mageia 2 Gnome edition. The quest for a naked Gnome continues.

Edited by raymac46, 10 July 2012 - 07:23 AM.

[sunrat]

raymac46, on 10 July 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

The quest for a naked Gnome continues.

Debian? Squeeze (stable) looks pretty naked to me. Or if you want more up-to-date packages, try wheezy (testing). I ran testing happily for several years before changing to sidux then aptosid.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Gnome 3 in Debian Sid. That's what I'm running.

[raymac46]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to give Wheezy a try but I have to netinstall because a Live image does not exist. We'll see how it goes. The installer looks a lot like Ubuntu's alternate installer.
Mageia's Gnome 3 is quite unstable in VBox. If you run the 3D enabled video without the Guest Additions (and you can't install them on the Live CD,) then the virtual machine crashes. Everything works fine in 2D fallback mode. After installing the Guest Additions and the 3D mode then you get the normal Gnome 3 Shell but it has some bugs. I could not add additional software in the Mageia Control Center without locking things up. However switching back to 2D mode restores everything to good order. I don't know if the problem is with Virtual Box, mageia or Gnome 3 itself but it sure is buggy.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I'll admit I haven't test drove it that far in Debian Sid, Ray, but Gnome 3 seems to be okee-dokee there. By the way, I don't netinstall. I just d-load the entire DVD.

[raymac46]

Eric which DVD do you need? There are about 7 that I could see.
My net install went fine and as long as I ran in 2D I was OK. However after installing Guest Additions and enabling 3D I immediately got an unrecoverable lockup right at the login screen and could not fix it, even if I went back to 2D. There is a real issue with VBox and Gnome 3 (at least as I have it installed) so I'm giving up on it. Mageia KDE works fine in VBox and this is the first time I've ever had problems with any desktop in a virtual machine. Has anyone gotten a Gnome 3 install to work in Virtual Box?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You only need the first DVD, Ray, for a complete install. I installed Sid (testing) 64 bit:

http://ftp.gtlib.gat.../amd64/iso-dvd/

[raymac46]

Thanks Eric. I'll download it and play around some more. I got Gnome 3 working OK in Mageia 2 in VBox by boosting the video memory up to the max and enabling 3D.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Have fun!

[saturnian]

raymac46, on 10 July 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

I thought I'd like to continue kicking the tires on Gnome 3 shell in VBox but it's getting hard to find pure unadulterated Gnome 3 out there. Both Ubuntu and Linux Mint have forked Gnome 3 and have their own custom DEs.
I tried a couple of unfamiliar distros out. I started with Kororaa which is Fedora with extra codecs, but I could not install in Vbox as the installer kept crashing. Then I tried Fedora 17 but had trouble getting it to update. In both cases getting the Guest Additions installed was a real PITA. So I tried adding Gnome to my Mageia 2 install and ended up with a very messy bloat that didn't run well in VBox.
Now I'm going to go back to basics and install Mageia 2 Gnome edition. The quest for a naked Gnome continues.

I have Fedora 17 running here (but, KDE) -- did you ever figure out why you had trouble getting it to update? No problems here so far until this morning, when I updated with Yumex and it failed to "get" on a bunch of mirrors before it finally found one that worked. Not sure what was up with that, it's the first time that has happened.

As for GNOME 3, I've been using GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 12.04 (does that count as "naked?") -- it was easy to add, and I switch back and forth between that and Unity -- and in Fedora 16.

I'm not sure how long it'll be before there's a Wheezy live image, but I figure it's only a matter of time.

[raymac46]

I gave up on Fedora for now as Mageia works better for me as far as updates go. I seemed to get in some sort of recursive loop where the updater wouldn't work because the update wasn't complete because the updater wouldn't work.

Edited by raymac46, 11 July 2012 - 06:54 AM.

[raymac46]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 10 July 2012 - 11:04 PM, said:

Have fun!

I downloaded the DVD but it seems impossibly broken. I got a kernel mismatch between the installer and the DVD, and it could not find the ethernet card in VBox. The net install works better in my view anyway. You can start with a tiny image and load the basic system, then the other software or (preferably) get a larger basic image and install the graphical desktop from the Internet. I've been using the expert curses based installer and staying away from the graphical stuff and that works fine. Just like a Ubuntu alternate install CD.

[raymac46]

OK here is a post from Debian Wheezy in VBox. Debian installs the Guest Additions as part of the process so I just enabled 3D and boosted the video up to the max and it's working OK so far. We'll see how it goes.

[sunrat]

Sounds good raymac. I always had good results from the netinstall. Wheezy is testing, so officially a work in progress and the installer is one of the fastest changing parts. I've had success with the nightly builds before too.

[raymac46]

I believe that the issues I was having with Gnome 3 were caused by insufficient video memory in the guest system. Once I maxed it out , installed the Guest Additions and made sure 3D was enabled in the guest things worked a lot better.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

raymac46, on 11 July 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

I downloaded the DVD but it seems impossibly broken. I got a kernel mismatch between the installer and the DVD, and it could not find the ethernet card in VBox.

I don't do virtual, so I wouldn't have a clue as to why you're experiencing those kind of errors.

[raymac46]

Back in VBox and Wheezy now. A few more observations:
It's best to power off rather than save the machine since when you boot back in to Gnome 3 you can get a hangup. Don't know why.
If all else fails, power off and go back to 2D acceleration. You'll get the classic Gnome 2D fallback which always works fine. In fact if I were going to use this VBox for any serious work I think I'd boot in classic Gnome all the time.

[raymac46]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 11 July 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

I don't do virtual, so I wouldn't have a clue as to why you're experiencing those kind of errors.

No I don't think VBox is the issue here; Maybe the DVD I downloaded didn't sync that well with the latest installer, or maybe I got the wrong DVD. I can install in VBox if I just do it the basic netinstall way. The netinstall CD image has the basic system so it goes very fast. Then it's just a matter of getting the graphical desktop from the Debian server. The US one worked better for me than the Canadian one.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

The Canadian one doesn't tip well, I hear.

[raymac46]

But it has better beer and ale, eh?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You bet, eh!

[raymac46]

BTW I have read that Ubuntu 12.10 will have a flavor of Gnome Shell 3 similar to what is offered with KDE Xfce etc.

[saturnian]

raymac46, on 15 July 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:

BTW I have read that Ubuntu 12.10 will have a flavor of Gnome Shell 3 similar to what is offered with KDE Xfce etc.

Where did you read this?

[raymac46]

http://www.ubuntuvib...nome-shell.html

[saturnian]

OK. I guess I was kinda confused about the "similar to what is offered with KDE Xfce etc." part. I thought you meant that it would be a GNOME Shell spin that would have some similarities to "KDE, Xfce etc."

Anyway, this is probably a good thing for a lot of people.

But, as I was saying, I added GNOME Shell to Ubuntu 12.04, and it's also kinda nice having them both. I've become so comfortable with either one that I'm not really sure which I prefer. I think I lean towards GNOME Shell, but... I have been using Unity for the past couple of days...

I'm absolutely no good at picking one thing and sticking with it!

Edited by saturnian, 16 July 2012 - 10:54 PM.