Gnome 3.0 - Mint Debian Edition?

[RoastedTiresX]

Is there a way currently to get Gnome 3.0/Gnome Shell installed on Mint Debian Edition? I know you can use the Gnome 3 PPA with Mint 11 but I'm curious about Mint Debian Edition in particular...

Thanks!

[karashata]

Add the unstable and experimental Debian repos to your sources.list. GNOME 3 is currently (mostly) in experimental (some files are slowly migrating into unstable) and can fairly easily be installed from there.

You can add the repos easily by running 'gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list' (without quotes) in the GNOME run dialog (Alt+F2), then copying the entry for Debian testing twice, changing 'testing' in one of the copied lines to 'unstable' and changing 'testing' in the second copied line to 'experimental'. Don't forget to refresh the package list afterward.

Also, you may find some useful information here on the Debian forums, and here on the Mint forums.

Depending on how ambitious you are, you might want to only upgrade the GNOME packages and dependencies, as the unstable and experimental repos are a little more likely to break than regular testing.

[RoastedTiresX]

Thank you for that information. I don't mean to sound foolish, but what is the proper order of Debian?

Stable
Unstable
Testing
Experimental

Is that how it goes?

Likewise, if all I do is just add the repos (I'm familiar with these steps) and do an apt-get dist-upgrade, will I get all of the new Gnome 3.0 stuff? Would Gnome Shell be an option in the repos as well?

My goal is to get working with Gnome Shell. That's really the bottom line. This will be on a test system so if it breaks, no big deal. BUT if it works without much of a headache I'd like to use it on my laptop as much as possible.

[karashata]

Actually, it's Stable, Testing, Unstable, Experimental. Packages will generally enter Experimental first, then progress down to Unstable, then Testing, then eventually to Stable.

I would not really recommend doing dist-upgrade, as there's a pretty good chance that you'll end up breaking your system. I've had to hold off on a number of upgrades that would uninstall needed components or software I prefer to leave installed since I use it.

I'm not entirely sure exactly which packages you need to specifically specify for installation in order to pull in everything else as dependencies, I'm currently trying to find an up-to-date list somewhere for you and I'll try to get back to you ASAP. In the mean time, perhaps someone else might already know and might be able to help you some while I'm looking...

EDIT: Still can't find that list... I would recommend using Synaptic, making sure your package list is updated, switching to the Status view and changing the filter to "Installed (upgradable)" and doing a search for gnome, then marking everything you see there for upgrade (except for one package, libgnome2-vfs-perl, that package wants to pull in other Perl dependencies and those dependencies will want to remove Pidgin and XChat, as well as a number of other files which you may not want to remove on the off chance it will break your system). Hopefully that will pull in everything else needed as dependencies. Don't be alarmed if you see a rather long list of packages being added or removed, quite a number of packages will need to be upgraded and installed, and older packages that haven't yet been upgraded for GNOME 3 will have to be removed. That's what I did, and it seems to have worked out for me, so hopefully it will work out for you as well.

Unfortunately I don't think I can be much more helpful than this, a lot of what I do is based on my own judgment and the risks I'm willing to take. I'll still try to answer any questions you might have as best I can as you go along or clarify anything I've already said if you don't understand.

[RoastedTiresX]

Thank you for your time. I appreciate your very informative post. I shall try this on a spare system at home and see how far I get.

Switching gears a little bit, do you know of any projected time lines in regard to Gnome 3? For example, I know Mint isn't using Gnome Shell by default but I can only assume once they integrate Gnome 3 as their platform, Gnome Shell is just a simple apt-get away. That said, do you know of any time line as to when Mint will get Gnome 3?

I'm also curious (if you might know) when I would be able to install the latest Mint Debian Edition and - oh look here - Gnome 3 by default... Like we established here, it's probably feasible to install Gnome 3 on Mint DE now, but I'm curious as to when it'll come "standard".

Thanks again!

[karashata]

As far as projected times goes, I believe Debian is of the mind that "it's ready when it's ready" and doesn't try to project times too much, For a current view of the status of GNOME 3 in Debian, you can always look here.

As far as the latest version of LMDE... that will also be ready when it's ready, I believe Clem plans on making changes to exactly how it works and how it manages updates and such so it might be a little way off yet... I doubt it will ship with GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell by default until after the main Mint GNOME edition does, the next Ubuntu-based GNOME edition may end up shipping with GNOME 3 but without the Shell, but we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out...

[RoastedTiresX]

As far as I know, Ubuntu 11.10 is confirmed as Gnome 3. Unity was built on 2.X for this one release with intention of porting it to Gnome 3 for the next release. I've also heard it confirmed that in 11.10, Gnome Shell is in the repos, which is good news for GS fans like myself. I would assume and hope Mint would follow suit for ease of installation for us fans out there.

Little off topic, I hear a lot about Clem. However, are there more developers than just Clem? I would assume there's a small army handling it.

[karashata]

I'm sure there's more than just Clem, but I believe he ends up having the final say in pretty much everything, at least for the main Mint edition. So, ultimately, he gets referenced a lot since Mint is more or less his.