Eyes and Hands on Gnome 2.4

While all Linux desktop environments were busy making themselves feature rich, Gnome people were making a desktop environment that’s simpler to use, not only by normal people but also by the physically impaired. The result is Gnome 2.4.

But, don’t think you’ll see only Brail and similar features in this version. They are there, but just as a part of the project. A totally new browser, modified and enhanced multimedia support, SVG support for icons, an upgraded Nautilus and a simplified panel are waiting for you in this version of Gnome, which is the first release of the 2.4 series. 

If you have used Ximian Desktop-2 (more on page 138, PCQuest, September 2003), you will find Gnome 2.4 quite familiar.

This is because Ximian Desktop-2 is based on Gnome 2.3, the development version of Gnome 2.4. On the other hand, if you are shifting from Gnome 2.2, you will find the Gnome 2.4 desktop completely different.

What’s different?



The first thing that you will notice in version 2.4 is that the panel is split into two. The bottom half contains all the minimized applications and the virtual desktop icons, while the top one contains all the menus, clock and volume controller.

Coming to icons, the new desktop icons are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) compliant–they can be resized to any extent without any quality loss. You will find consistent graphics in any resolution because, unlike in bitmaps, SVG images contain the element shape instead of pixel information. 

The off-the-screen achievement of the Gnome desktop is that now the objects of the desktop are processed in the memory instead of from the actual file in the directory. This speeds up activity on the desktop–for example, the icons on the desktop open more quickly in this version.

Epiphany is a new and very light browser that is included in the core distribution of Gnome. Since this browser is depended on and uses the Mozilla core, to install Epiphany your machine should have Mozilla 1.4 or Mozilla 1.5 release candidate installed on it.

Nautilus (the file explorer) is also modified in this version. This is the same version that is used in Ximian Desktop-2. So, you will find all the features of drag-and-drop CD writing, multimedia support and SVG icons in it.

The accessibility options are the key feature of Gnome 2.4. This version is released as the first big public beta for two new applications that are included in the Gnome distribution. They are GOK (Gnome On screen Keyboard) and

Gnoprencius.

Both these are focused on helping different types of impaired persons and follow Sun Microsystem’s HIG (Human Interface Guideline), which deals with research related to making the interface more easy to follow and work faster. 

The GOK software is for those who cannot use the standard physical input device (keyboard), because of any reason–less strength in the hands or lesser mobility. It helps the user to accesses this virtual keyboard with any other pointing device.

Gnoprencius, the other software, is meant for the visually impaired. The software has a text-to-speech engine that can speak out any text that appears on any dialogue box, button or panel. It can also magnify any part of the screen to make reading easy. For completely blind persons, it has a Brail support. When used with proper hardware, it can give output in Brail.

Installing Gnome 2.4 



You can install Gnome off the Net (www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/) through the online installer called Garnome. The only drawback with this approach is that you need a good connection speed as it directly installs the software from different ftp sites–so, if any ftp server is down or you have a poor connection, you will end up with nothing. 

Another way is to install it from this month’s PCQXtreme CD. This is a long and cumbersome way of doing it because you have to manually compile and install 76 Gnome components. But, we are suggesting this approach to get the adrenaline rushing in all you geeks. 

So, let’s get started. You will need at least 200 MB of free disk space as you have to copy about 76 files to your machine and then one by one unzip and compile them. But, we would recommend that you have at least 500 MB free. If you have less space, you can one by one delete the files and unzipped folders once the package gets compiled and installed.

Now, we come to the main part. Here, you have to unzip, compile and install all the 76 files manually. Seems tough? Yes, it is.

We could have provided a shell script that would have automatically installed them for you, but we haven’t because if any problem (such as resolving dependencies) were to occur, it would be difficult to figure out the error.

To install Gnome you have to run four commands for each of the 76 files and that too in a fixed sequence or nothing will work.

The commands you have to run are:

#tar —-zxvf (this will unzip the file)

Now change to the directory created by unzipping the tarball and run

#./configure (this will check for dependencies)

It will also create the Makefile and other important files, which will be needed when running the Make command. Generally, if you have some dependency problems it will stop the process and give an error message of what exact package is needed by it. So that you can first install that and again run the ./configure command. 

#make (this will compile the source code)



#make install (this will install the component to you machine)

You need to follow the above four commands for the 76 files in the sequence given in the box. We did it on PCQLinux 8.0 that was installed in the Everything option.

Remember to run the following commands after installing pkgconfig and then follow the sequence.

# export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/



lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig #export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/ lib:/lib:/usr/lib:/var/lib:/usr/X11R6/lib

If you are using any other version of Linux or having problems, you can refer to

www.gnome.org/start/2.4/notes/rninstallation.html.

Anindya Roy