Hello World! GNOME 3.0 was just released to the public and already it’s available in Arch Linux. Granted it’s in the testing and unstable repository (at the time of this writing), but it’s very much available and very much usable. In this article I will outline how to fresh-install GNOME 3.0 on your Arch Linux system.
Configuration
In order to install GNOME 3.0 on Arch Linux you’ll need to make some changes to your pacman.conf file. This will instruct pacman to reference two new repositories, the [testing] and [gnome-unstable]. GNOME 3.0 is built on top of testing, so the order is important here as well. Your pacman.conf should end up looking like this:
[gnome-unstable]
Server = http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch[testing]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist#[community-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Once you’ve made this change you’re ready to install the new gnome package and its dependencies.
Installation
Installing GNOME 3.0 is very similar to installing 2.3x, with the only difference that you’re pulling it from a different repository. Referencing the new repository allows you to make sure you’re getting the right package:
pacman -S gnome-unstable/gnome
and for additional applications
pacman -S gnome-unstable/gnome-extra
Into the future…
GNOME 3.0 is just the first of a new generation. We can expect GNOME 3.2 in the fall (September) with a number of great improvements! In the meantime, please install it, play with it, offer feedback, and let’s make GNOME great!