GNOME

2025-08-16T08:14:02Z

Papang: Fix typo: engeneering -> engineering

[https://www.gnome.org/ Gnome Desktop] aims to get things done with ease, comfort, and control.

== Prerequisites ==
{{:Include:Desktop prerequisites}}
{{Tip|Except for the first two [[#Prerequisites|Prerequisites]], all the others are automatically handled by [[#Installation|setup-desktop]] script.}}
== Installation ==
{{:Include:Setup-desktop}}

When gnome is chosen, the above script enables community repository and additionally installs [[D-Bus]], [[eudev]], [[PipeWire|Pipewire]] and {{Pkg|gdm}} as [[Display manager|display manager]] .

== Configuration ==

To manage network through GUI, configure [[NetworkManager]]. You may need to [[Install]] necessary subpackages like {{Pkg|networkmanager-wifi}}.

=== Software ===

GNOME [https://apps.gnome.org/Software/ Software] can be used as GUI front end for [[Alpine Package Keeper]] and [[Flatpak|Flatpak]].
* [[Install]] the packages {{pkg|gnome-software-plugin-apk}} and {{pkg|gnome-software-plugin-flatpak}}, if not already installed.
* Ensure that {{ic|apk-polkit-server}} service from {{pkg|apk-polkit-rs}} package is running:{{cmd|# rc-update add apk-polkit-server default && rc-service apk-polkit-server start}}

== Updating GNOME packages ==

Most GNOME apps and core systems follow a common versioning pattern, and have a similar release cadence. In order to reduce the workload on maintainers, the [https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/pabloyoyoista/gnome-aports-utils gnome-aports-utils] project exists. It contains a series of scripts that can be used to detect changes on GNOME-related projects, and commit them. When doing major GNOME updates, and doing minor updates on many projects, these scripts can help warranty that no project is forgotten, and reduce the time needed to build and test the upgrades.

We recommend everybody to '''use and contribute''' to that repository instead of pushing updates for every GNOME component individually.

=== Major GNOME upgrade ===

About every half year, GNOME publishes a new major release. These are announced at: https://release.gnome.org/calendar/ (note the dates are the tarball-due-dates and not the actual release drop).

With this release the whole GNOME stack gets upgraded, this includes G-related libraries, the GNOME shell with mutter, [https://apps.gnome.org/ GNOME core apps] and other packages following the same schedule. The [https://matrix.to/#/%23release-team:gnome.org GNOME release engineering team] publishes dates for alpha, beta, release candidates and stable versions for every major version, most GNOME core packages follow their schedules, but not all of them. Announcements of the releng team are posted on the GNOME forum (https://discourse.gnome.org/tag/release-team) and Release Notes for each phase (with it's upgraded packages) are at: https://download.gnome.org/core/

Therefore we should also upgrade along the dependency tree (glib -> gtk4 -> mutter -> gnome-shell -> other apps). Most important libraries are glib, gtk4, libadwaita. These are mostly already released in the alpha-phase and don't contain many breaking changed. To upgrade other GNOME core package to the latest version in a major version, you can use [https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/pabloyoyoista/gnome-aports-utils gnome-aports-utils] or also check [https://download.gnome.org/sources/?C=M&O=D https://download.gnome.org/sources (sorted by date)] (thats where all GNOME core maintainers upload their tarballs).

Also take a look at Gentoo's upgrading guide: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:GNOME/GNOME_Bumping_Guide

== Troubleshooting ==

If you are unable to log in, check {{Path|/var/log/gdm/greeter.log}}, there may be info there from X that indicates failed modules, etc.

If GNOME Terminal doesn't start, add the following to /etc/profile.d/locale.sh: <code>LANG=en_US.UTF-8</code> and reboot.

If the on-screen keyboard shows up in GDM after installing other UIs such as Phosh, you need to disable it by opening the Accessibility menu (top right) when you are in the GDM login screen. You can disable the on-screen keyboard there. Or set <code>org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled</code> to <code>false</code> for the <code>gdm</code> user with <code>dconf</code>

=== Slow applications or rendering issues ===

Please note that some applications, i.e. Gnome Web (Epiphany), may require the installation of libraries related to hardware acceleration to work correctly.

In quite some cases, this can be solved by installing <code>mesa-gles</code> (OpenGL ES). Check if you you have issues loading the shared library <code>libGLESv2.so.2</code>. If so, you can install it with:{{Cmd|# apk add mesa-gles}}

== See also ==

* [https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME GNOME - Archwiki]
* [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME GNOME - Gentoo Wiki]
* [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/GNOME GNOME - PostmarketOS Wiki]
* [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/GNOME_apps Alpine linux packages available for Gnome]

[[Category:Desktop Environments]]

Alpine Linux - User contributions [en]

GNOME