From Gnome2 to XFCE...

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:38 am Post subject: From Gnome2 to XFCE...

Has anyone tried to change from Gnome2 to XFCE on a live system?
I wonder how much of a mess it will be to convert a "working" setup since masking Gnome3 is pretty restrictive. Plus things will probably still will install Gnome3 stuff... Also to depclean all the stuff no longer needed, which is the primary reason for doing this switch as disk space is limited.

I guess my currently uniform Gnome2 machines will be switching to partially Gnome3 and partially something else. So much for common environment...
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i92guboj · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:36 am Post subject:

It should be exactly as difficult as typing "emerge -va xfce4-meta" and pressing enter.

How big the merge will be depends upon the USE flags as always.

Anything that worked under gnome will work under xfce as well (or under any other wm, anyway...). After you get a workable xfce setup you can start worrying about what gnome programs you use, and if you are going to depend on them or look for alternatives so you can unmerge gnome.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:39 am Post subject:

For now, it's easy to go with xfce and gnome2/gtk2

But for the future, xfce is looking at moving to gtk3.
I don't know what that will entail but keep it in mind.

Good luck.
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i92guboj · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:46 am Post subject:

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:59 am Post subject:

I wasn't trying to talk him out of switching.
Just a heads up for where they might be going.

Yes, it's easy enough to put things in a local overlay and stay with what works.
That's part of the reason that I even said anything so that he could think
about doing that if he likes xfce.

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i92guboj · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 1:06 pm Post subject:

I didn't dare to think you were trying to talk him out of switching. I think I am just frustrated with how things are going in Linux, and was just thinking aloud

In fact, I think that to keep changing is the best thing you can do right now, the final landing zone is ${INSERT_A_SANE_WM_NAME_HERE} + USE="-consolekit -udev -policykit -udisks -upower". That or just surrender and go to Ubuntu. Eventually, if things go ok, freebsd will gain enough momentum while linux becomes something else. That will be in the 2020's, I'm feeling Nostradamus today :lol:

In the while, people can keep changing to xfce, that'll keep the thing working for a couple more years, at most, I guess... :roll:

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 1:16 pm Post subject:

I used xfce for a while, and it was ok, I didn't like the dependencies that they had
on gnome (small though they were) and decided to go with lxde.
Though I could go strictly with openbox which lxde uses, and just use lxpanel or tint for a panel.

As far as the use flags, I have these in my make.conf

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 5:06 pm Post subject:

What I hope is that the XFCE install, gtk3 or not, is smaller than the Gnome3 install. Also a plus of not having systemd helps.
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 5:18 pm Post subject:

xfce was smaller than gnome2, even with some pieces of gnome it used.
So I should be lots smaller than gnome3.
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666threesixes666 · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 8:03 pm Post subject:

the thing that blows my mind about gnome3 is less options, less choices, slower, and bigger. wtf in other news, it has a touch screen keyboard. thanks obama

Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 887 Location: Germany

I didn't exactly move to XFCE - I just chose to install that when I got my laptop.
On my desktop I do experiment with DEs, though, and installing any other DE just required me to issue the correct emerge command. Simple as that. Well, in the case of MATE and e17 I had to install an overlay first.

What can I say, as a 2 year XFCE user I'm quite content with it. It's not that much of a difference from Gnome 2. If you install it, though, you'll run into some Gnome applications that you might want to have around that use gtk3 now. I was too stupid to make those use a gtk3 theme and they looked butt-ugly, which is why I decided to use the applications from the MATE overlay, i.e. atril instead of evince, engrampa instead of fileroller and... that's about it at the moment.
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i92guboj · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 9:16 am Post subject:

xaviermiller · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 9:19 am Post subject:

I switched from razorqt to xfce, and I am very happy : it's simple (the meta package has just the bare minimum), can live without *KIT and U*, and has many working plug-ins (especially the battery plug-in which don't need *KIT and UPower).
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i92guboj · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 9:21 am Post subject:

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:46 am Post subject:

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:20 am Post subject:

One thing I did like about xfce which lxde doesn't have (natively) is window transparency.
I do use compton for that and it works well.
I like to keep the title bar semi-transparent as well as any background window including when I move them.

They also had some nice panel apps.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:35 pm Post subject:

I emerged xfce4-meta (installed 14 packages) on a scratch disk that I needed to upgrade anyway and it works... However, woah... it still has my gnome apps listed. And nm-applet shows up...

I emerge -C'ed gnome (top level)... Now need to clean up the rest of the mess. --depclean complains about dirty portage state since I haven't upgraded in a while. :( Also systemd is being pulled in, still. Tried using USE=-systemd as well as masking it... ugh, still wants systemd...
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:10 pm Post subject:

There is probably some buried gnome dependency.

You might run emerge with the -t flag and see what is trying to pull in systemd.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:51 pm Post subject:

Looks like that I had introspection set, which had consequences. Since I don't need locale support, I disabled i18n as well, and with USE=-introspection -i18n I got past the upgrades needed before I can depclean...

I hope after depcleaning I can get the install size down...
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:59 pm Post subject:

I mentioned what USE flags I use earlier in this thread, I never have know what introspection is really used for so I've always kept it off.

Install size depends on what packages you have, my root runs about 4.5 gig minus /home and /usr/portage
but I have apache, mariadb, bind, wine and associated libs to run it so they take up a large part of that space.

Getting rid of gnome should give you considerable space.

After depclean you might run "qlist -IC gnome-base" and "qlist -IC gnome-extra" to list any overt pkgs that you might have missed.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 9:52 pm Post subject:

For some reason introspection triggers systemd to get installed, I have no clue why. i18n had something to do with introspection.
I was hoping that the install is less than 4.5GB. I actually don't mind pulseaudio and it's kind of helpful at times.

Granted this machine does not need apache, it's kind of weird:
31GB disk size (32GB SSD)
-23GB World of Warcrack
----
8GB system use + free space

8GB system use + free space
-1GB Kernel sources
-1GiB Swap/hibernation file (I really should make this 2GB but can't afford the space)
-2.2GB current free space (I really need to make this larger to give the SSD more breathing space, like around 3-4GB)
------
3.8GB system size

This 3.8GB is Wine, Gnome2 (full/regular install), libreoffice, wireshark, firefox, + other misc stuff... and the portage tree isn't even on this disk...

I hope that this 3.8GB does not grow, ideally shrink when this is all done and through. Granted I am asking a lot, it's that 23GB crap that "really" needs to go [on a diet]...

Note that this isn't my test disk yet. I'm experimenting on a 200GB hard disk so the temp install size isn't a big deal... For the 32G SSD it is a problem...
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i92guboj · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:29 pm Post subject:

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:08 am Post subject:

Thanks, I'm currently letting it all build because this disk is really out of date, it hasn't been upgraded since Gnome3 went live. Well, I had to let it update because --depclean was complaining :) I hope a lot of stuff can be depcleaned away though... we'll see...
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eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:04 pm Post subject:

i92guboj · Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 10:57 pm Post subject:

I use the wicd-curses frontend. It works very well and has tons of options in an easy to use interface.

I don't know for sure but I think that the gtk frontend won't depend on gnome either.