Installing gnome desktop environment

[iamsorandom]

Hi,

I'd like to install gnome desktop enviromnent (I currently have linux mint kde 14, but want to have both as an option).

However when trying to install it with apt-get in terminal I got this error:

"Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
gnome : Depends: gedit (>= 3.0) but 2.30.4-2ubuntu1 is to be installed
Recommends: browser-plugin-gnash but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: gdebi but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: gnome-games-extra-data (>= 3.0) but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: liferea but it is not going to be installed or
evolution-rss but it is not going to be installed or
blam but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: menu-xdg but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: telepathy-idle but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
"

Does anyone have any ideas what this means? How I can solve it?
I'm not sure I have the correct repositories - would this cause this problem and how would I deal with that (what would the address be for the linux min repository, would this cover it?)

Cheers!

[kc1di]

Hello iamsorandom and welcome to linux Mint,

what you want can be done quite easily. But first let me know when you say you want to try gnome do you
mean gnome 3 , mate or Cinnamon.
The latter two are and easy install from the repositories.
Go to synaptic and search for the following.
mint-meta-cinnamon or mint-meta-mate
mate is a clone of gnome 2x.
Cinnamon is placed on top of gnome 3. without gnome shell.

if you want to run the gnome 3 shell you'll have to install gnome-shell
which ever you try they will be available at the log in page under the sessions button.

Happy computing.

[iamsorandom]

Hi kc1di,

Actually, to be honest what I want to do is go on a cairo-dock session using gnome (when you install cairo-dock it adds a login uption called cairo-dock (gnome). This allows you to log onto to a desktop environment which has the cairo dock instead of the normal taskbars etc... I tried this when I was using unity.

However, when I tried to log onto this a couple of days ago it came up with an error message, saying that gnome was not found and so it could not log into this - "gnome-session --session=cairo-dock not found"

Do you think if I install any of gnome-3, mate, or cinnamon, this will solve this problem?

Cheers,
Nick

[kc1di]

Hi kc1di,

Actually, to be honest what I want to do is go on a cairo-dock session using gnome (when you install cairo-dock it adds a login uption called cairo-dock (gnome). This allows you to log onto to a desktop environment which has the cairo dock instead of the normal taskbars etc... I tried this when I was using unity.

However, when I tried to log onto this a couple of days ago it came up with an error message, saying that gnome was not found and so it could not log into this - "gnome-session --session=cairo-dock not found"

Do you think if I install any of gnome-3, mate, or cinnamon, this will solve this problem?

Cheers,
Nick

It should solve it if you install cinnamon. Mate is gnome 2x and I'm not sure the dock will work with it. then install gnome-shell if needed.

cinnamon will pull gnome 3 as it's based upon it but I think you may need gnome shell as well.
Good Luck

[iamsorandom]

Thanks!

But I just tried to do this and got the following warning:

"WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!"

Any ideas?

[kc1di]

Hi
That warning usually come up when your apt source list does not match the repositories your trying to use.

Have you added or deleted any repositories since you installed mint?

Please go to a text editor and open the following file and past the results here.
open

Code: Select all

/etc/apt/sources.list

[iamsorandom]

It lists the following:

"# deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
# deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
"

[kc1di]

It lists the following:

"# deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
# deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
"

That is definitely a non-working sources list.

here is approximately what it should look like.

Code: Select all

deb http://mirror.jmu.edu/pub/linuxmint/packages/ maya main upstream import backport
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ precise partner
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ precise free non-free


in fact you can copy this one to a text editor and save it as /etc/apt/sources.list it's ok to overwrite the one you have since it does not contain anything worthwhile.
you'll have to do it a root by issuing the following command in a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit

copy and past the above code in gedit when it comes up and save it as /etc/apt/sources.list

then go to a terminal and type the following

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update

Then try installing mint-meta-cinnamon again.

[iamsorandom]

Hey kc1di,

I tried as you said and managed to do the install (in the end opted to try mate but had to install gnome shell as well) but although I could log into the mate option, couldn't log into any of the other new ones - gnome 3, or the cairo dock option that I was trying to get to. Instead, It just came up with a black screen, and a mouse pointer, but nothing else.

Any idea what might be causing this? Could it be to do with choosing to stick with the kdm display manager when I installed the packages?

Cheers!

[kc1di]

the manager doesn't make any difference. it' more likely that your video card can't handle 3d graphics.

What video card are you using?

[iamsorandom]

I'm pretty sure it can deal with 3D graphics - and I've had gnome installed before with no problems (just not installed from linux mint KDE)

In the KDE info centre under open-GL it says: 3D accelerator = Intel, Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller

I'm surprised how many problems there seem to be to get this to work, thanks for all your help though!