HowTo: minimal gnome-shell on BunsenLabs

hhh · 2016-07-11 00:31:52

Post your version, scrot links, configs, extensions, tips & tricks and anything else here.

I use a minmal GNOME session on jessie (gnome-shell 3.14). Here's the dpkg -l ouput regarding gnome...

ii  gnome-backgrounds                       3.14.1-1                 all                      Set of backgrounds packaged with the GNOME desktop
ii  gnome-common                            3.14.0-1                 all                      common scripts and macros to develop with GNOME
ii  gnome-control-center                    1:3.14.2-3               i386                     utilities to configure the GNOME desktop
ii  gnome-control-center-data               1:3.14.2-3               all                      configuration applets for GNOME - data files
ii  gnome-desktop3-data                     3.14.1-1                 all                      Common files for GNOME desktop apps
ii  gnome-icon-theme                        3.12.0-1                 all                      GNOME Desktop icon theme
ii  gnome-icon-theme-symbolic               3.12.0-1                 all                      GNOME desktop icon theme (symbolic icons)
ii  gnome-keyring                           3.14.0-1+b1              i386                     GNOME keyring services (daemon and tools)
ii  gnome-logs                              3.14.2-1                 i386                     viewer for the systemd journal.
ii  gnome-mime-data                         2.18.0-1                 all                      base MIME and Application database for GNOME.
ii  gnome-pkg-tools                         0.19.4                   all                      Tools for the Debian GNOME Packaging Team
ii  gnome-session                           3.14.0-2                 all                      GNOME Session Manager - GNOME 3 session
ii  gnome-session-bin                       3.14.0-2                 i386                     GNOME Session Manager - Minimal runtime
ii  gnome-session-common                    3.14.0-2                 all                      GNOME Session Manager - common files
ii  gnome-settings-daemon                   3.14.2-3                 i386                     daemon handling the GNOME session settings
ii  gnome-shell                             3.14.4-1~deb8u1          i386                     graphical shell for the GNOME desktop
ii  gnome-shell-common                      3.14.4-1~deb8u1          all                      common files for the GNOME graphical shell
ii  gnome-system-monitor                    3.14.1-1                 i386                     Process viewer and system resource monitor for GNOME
ii  gnome-themes-standard:i386              3.14.2.2-1               i386                     Standard GNOME themes
ii  gnome-themes-standard-data              3.14.2.2-1               all                      Data files for GNOME standard themes
ii  gnome-tweak-tool                        3.14.2-2                 all                      tool to adjust advanced configuration settings for GNOME

And gdm3, of course. No application dependencies to speak of, I use Thunar, Leafpad and LxTerminal.

I added a bunch of extensions today, the list is getting long. I had to tweak a few of them to get them to install and to fix their appearance in the panel...

Alternatetab
Frippery move clock
Glassy gnome (panel icon removal hack, see his GitHub issues, I filed one)
Hide activities button
Hide app icon
Impatience (set to .65)
No topleft hot corner
Openweather
Random walls
Refresh wifi connections
Remove dropdown arrows
Taskbar (custom css for the active highlight color)
Top icons
User themes
Volume mixer

I'll upload my shell theme soon. GTK themes are Antimon...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 019#p29019

-edit- screencast...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 019#p32019

hhh · 2016-07-12 04:26:37

Well, maybe I won't upload my shell theme. Nyeah! Anyway, glad I archived this.

I duplicated this basic setup (no extensions or theming) over BL using the CD-nonPAE ISO. After installation and running some of the bl-welcome script, I installed a minimal gnome setup with the following command...

sudo apt install gdm3 gnome-backgrounds gnome-common gnome-control-center gnome-icon-theme gnome-keyring gnome-logs gnome-pkg-tools gnome-session gnome-shell gnome-system-monitor gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool fonts-cantarell --no-install-recommends

gnome-shell-extensions is available too, but be careful of the app-menu extension it installs...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 078#p33078

This installed 184 new packages. apt warned me about having 2 display managers installed, I chose gdm3, let the install finish and rebooted. GNOME was the default session on reboot (my scrots are not chronological)...

Nice RAM usage for gnome-session, right?

I then removed lightdm...

sudo apt purge lightdm-gtk-greeter && sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

... and restored the BL desktop as the default session (choose "openbox-session")...

sudo update-alternatives --config x-session-manager

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 090#p19090

Done. GNOME without most dependencies, I'm running leafpad, thunar and lxterminal.

NOTE!!! DO NOT log into the gnome-fallback/"classic" session without installing the requirements, you'll be sorry! I'm not sure what needs to be installed, but definitely at least this...
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/gnome-flashback

Maybe also this, which would stink since it depends on nautilus...
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/gnome-flashback

Navigate panels via the keyboard: Ctrl+Alt+Tab / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Tab, then arrow buttons and Enter or Esc. This works for the login screen too (gdm3).

It took me ages to find this tip, it's very poorly documented AFAICT...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Acces … _the_panel

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-07-12 07:43:48

hhh wrote:

Nice RAM usage for gnome-session, right?

Yeah, GNOME gets a lot of criticism but it can be trimmed right down

Also, because the desktop uses hardware acceleration it can actually be quicker than a bare window manager such as Openbox if you have a reasonably decent GPU to share the load with the CPU.

hhh · 2016-07-15 02:22:47

Adding "HowTo" to the subject line. AFAIK, nobody else has posted a minimal Debian GNOME install walkthrough.

fox · 2016-07-15 17:02:32

Interesting, hhh. Two questions. First, what advantage does gnome-shell have over the default BL install, especially given that you aren't using any manifestations of it (that I can see) on your desktop? Second, why gdm3 over lightdm?

Or did you just do this to demonstrate proof of concept?

Last edited by fox (2016-07-15 17:02:53)

jalexander9 · 2016-07-15 19:33:16

@hhh - As always very cool! Maybe I'll take this route instead of my next distro-hopping adventure?

hhh · 2016-07-15 20:09:47

fox wrote:

... what advantage does gnome-shell have over the default BL install, especially given that you aren't using any manifestations of it (that I can see) on your desktop?

Partially proof of concept. I've been using the same setup but on jessie as my main desktop after many months of running a minimal Mate desktop, so I was curious if I could duplicate it on BL. Advantages? Well, for me, no more pulseaudio/volume applet/notification issues and dynamic creation/deletion of virtual desktops (I love it).

The other stuff like eye candy, a taskbar with a weather applet and a powerfull applauncher/search tool are easily matched in BL by adding compton window fade, mate-panel and xfce4-appfinder, but it's nice having it all integrated.

Though there is little trace of BL when logged into GNOME (bl-alternatives still apply, though), the entire BL session still is present and can be logged into normally.

... why gdm3 over lightdm?

To add gnome-screenlocker/screen shield for the total GNOME experience. Not necessary, though you may have to double-check that lightdm is starting all of gnome correctly. I was planning to test lightdm, actually, I'll post back when I do.

Adding a note to the OP about the Gnome Fallback session entry, logging into that screwed things up since I didn't have the required packages installed.

fox · 2016-07-16 20:24:04

Let me stand my question on its head. I am having bad freezing problems on my office iMac running Ubuntu 16.04 with a second display connected. I have tried a lot of things troubleshooting this, and I have a few more things to try before I throw up my hands. I'm thinking that if neither of these things work, I would try replacing Ubuntu with something Debian-based that can give me the features I like in Gnome-shell, but doesn't have whatever is causing the freezing. I wonder if it's worth trying a default install of BL, plus the essential gnome-shell features that would allow me to use the gnome-shell extensions to set up the desktop the way I like it?

hhh · 2016-07-16 20:36:16

Whether it's worth it is up to you. If you can back up your personal data, the only real issue is time, as you can always re-install Ubuntu if this doesn't meet your needs. You could test this all by using the BL ISO in live mode, the packages should install anyway. Re-login w/ username user and password live.

You could also first try removing the unity desktop and trying my gnome install command on your ubuntu setup and see what happens.

Regarding extensions, be pedantic. Install/activate one at a time. Alt+F2>r to restart the shell each time, and reopen gnome-tweak-tool.

Post your decision, any help issues and progress reports here, please. That's what this thread is for!

cloverskull · 2016-07-17 16:07:14

This is excellent. I'm quite enjoying my new Gnome desktop. Thanks for the howto! My only complaint is that the "Applications Menu" extension doesn't work, and now I can't remove it. I tried turning it on and it threw an error and that was that...kind of strange. I would love to have an applications menu like xfce or something along those lines.

Other than that, no complaints...it's quite fantastic

** edit **

I take that back, one other thing that doesn't work in Gnome-tweak-tool is the "Icons on Desktop" setting. Bummer.

Last edited by cloverskull (2016-07-17 16:09:14)

hhh · 2016-07-17 20:27:30

^ I can't test right now, my desktop is in heavy usage! I'll post later, though, so don't wipe everything out yet.

cloverskull · 2016-07-17 20:58:30

Looks like Nautilus is required for the desktop icons...which is kind of a bummer, but hey, I guess I'll just be using Nautilus now. Not too much bloat I suppose.

The "Applications Menu" is still a bit puzzling, though.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-07-17 21:00:03

cloverskull wrote:

I guess I'll just be using Nautilus now. Not too much bloat I suppose.

Nautilus has the exact same bloat that thunar carries in BunsenLabs -- that scourge useful tool we know as gvfs...

8.(

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-07-17 21:00:54)

fox · 2016-07-20 17:02:30

hhh wrote:

Whether it's worth it is up to you. If you can back up your personal data, the only real issue is time, as you can always re-install Ubuntu if this doesn't meet your needs. You could test this all by using the BL ISO in live mode, the packages should install anyway. Re-login w/ username user and password live.
You could also first try removing the unity desktop and trying my gnome install command on your ubuntu setup and see what happens.
Regarding extensions, be pedantic. Install/activate one at a time. Alt+F2>r to restart the shell each time, and reopen gnome-tweak-tool.
Post your decision, any help issues and progress reports here, please. That's what this thread is for!

First of all, I did give serious consideration to installing BL plus your skeleton gnome on my iMac, but decided against this because I'm actually quite happy with Ubuntu on my desktop computers, and because I knew that there would be some issues in even getting BL to install on this computer.(I tried booting it from an installation USB stick and it didn't complete the sequence. This may have to do with secure boot, and I'm not even sure if it's an option to turn that off on an Intel Mac. I decided instead to reinstall Ubuntu 16.04 from scratch. I did this by shrinking the troublesome Ubuntu partition and installing the new 16.04 in the free space. I then brought back the main apps I was using and my files which are stored in Dropbox and Google Drive. Three things I didn't do:
(1) install gnome-3 (so Unity desktop only);
(2) no nvidia driver (nouveau only);
(3) I did not rearrange the display setting to match my actual monitor configuration. What I mean by that is that the extra monitor is on the left, but the configuration settings default it to the right of the internal iMac monitor. Up until now I have been changing the screen display to match the actual arrangement. Not doing so means I have to move the mouse to the right to get it onto the auxiliary monitor, which is on the left. (Someone from my Linux user group asked me why I don't just move the auxiliary monitor to the right, but it doesn't work in my workspace.)

I can happily report that in the two days since I made this change, I have not experienced a single freeze despite heavy use of the computer. Now I am going to change the three things noted above, one by one, and see if any of these bring back the freezes. If one does, then I know the culprit. If none does, then I will do one more thing and wipe the old 16.04 installation and expand the current partition to take up all the space originally taken up by the old installation. If the freezes then don't occur, I would assume that there was something amiss in the original installation, but I'll never know what it was. Not the best result in terms of gaining an understanding, but much better than living with all those freezes.

Last edited by fox (2016-07-20 17:04:13)

hhh · 2016-07-20 21:21:13

For sure, freezing sucks. I quickly began hating early Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, I think?) because they ran GNOME 2 so heavy that IT would freeze! XP was faster than default Ubuntu at the time, and updating Windows was way more of a pain but at least your video still worked afterwards!

I've done some Ubuntu mini.iso setups recently. If I didn't prefer rock solid over new and shiny, I'd happily use it now. Actually, I could just stay on LTS. Hmmm.

So far I've been able to backport my desires to jessie, so I'll suffer with stable and shiny for now.

johnraff · 2016-07-21 04:24:43

hhh wrote:

early Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, I think?) ... XP was faster than default Ubuntu at the time

Forsooth. I quickly found out how to install Xubuntu which was much better.

hhh · 2016-07-21 05:52:28

cloverskull wrote:

My only complaint is that the "Applications Menu" extension doesn't work, and now I can't remove it.

Try removing the extension folder from ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions and rebooting. A long shot, I've had extensions not uninstall before.

https://extensions.gnome.org/local/

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/ … h-to-dock/

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/ … ions-menu/

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/711/dexi-menu/

cloverskull · 2016-07-21 17:56:28

@hhh - Actually, I should have updated the thread. I removed the applications menu entry from the globally-installed (by default) location. I think it came bundled from the debian repo (which scares me into thinking it'll re-download at some point). Manually installing it for my local user only from the gnome extensions site fixed it. Thanks!

hhh · 2016-07-21 20:26:02

Great! You won't download anything unless you specifically try to install the gnome-shell-extensions package from Debian. If you still have that package installed, just remember to remove that extension again if the package updates (or just don't re-enable it).

cloverskull · 2016-07-21 20:50:13

Cool, thanks. I'm hesitant to admit this, but the way I have Gnome set up now is actually preferable to openbox (say it ain't so!). I have set gnome as the default session. What have I become?!

#1 2016-07-11 00:31:52

HowTo: minimal gnome-shell on BunsenLabs

#2 2016-07-12 04:26:37

Re: HowTo: minimal gnome-shell on BunsenLabs

#3 2016-07-12 07:43:48

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#4 2016-07-15 02:22:47

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#7 2016-07-15 20:09:47

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