Experience with setting up CentOS 7 (GNOME 3 etc.,)

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gnarendran
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Joined: 2014/08/08 08:00:44

Experience with setting up CentOS 7 (GNOME 3 etc.,)

Post by gnarendran » 2014/08/09 07:53:49

Installed CentOS 7 x86_64 workstation. Being new to GNOME 3, had some difficulties, and resolved them, with help from various sites. Here is a summary, in the hope it might help others starting up:

(All yum install below are as su, or using sudo.)

a) IMPORTANT: In the login Window, there is a small '*' like settings button that lets you choose between GNOME, GNOME classic, KDE etc., Choose GNOME for GNOME 3. If this is set correctly, you will have the environment variable DESKTOP_SESSION set to "gnome".
GNOME 3 has nice shell extension plugins. Found the following useful:

b) sudo yum install gnome-shell-browser-plugin - works with Firefox. Not chrome.

c) sudo yum install gnome-shell-extension*

d) For hidetopbar plugin, the instructions are in https://github.com/mlutfy/hidetopbar

e) For "Show Advanced Settings (gnome-tweak-tool) in UserMenu" the plugin is at http://shs-schubert.de/gnome-shell/
unzip into ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
cd advanced-settings-in-usermenu@SHS-Schubert.de
edit metadata.json to add "3.8" to shell_version : "3.6", "3.8"
gnome-shell-extension-tool -e advanced-settings-in-usermenu@SHS-Schubert.de

f) Use gnome-tweak-tool to configure the plugins. Details and more extensions at https://extensions.gnome.org/ (again, using Firefox).

g) To reduce the title bar size of the windows:
First reduce the font size using gnome-tweak-tool (Advanced Settings) -> Fonts -> Window title Font
cp {/usr,~/.local}/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
Edit the .local metacity-theme-3.xml, to decrease all title_vertical_pad to 2, except for one that is commented to be one less (change that to 1).

h) Important keys:
The 'Windows' key provides the overview. Mouse moved to the top left corner does the same.
Alt-F2 -> r command restarts gnome.
Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down: Switches between workspaces.
Alt-Tab: Switches between apps.

There is of course much more to GNOME 3, but the above got it to a decent shape for me to start with.

i) An user describes how to get mplayer working: http://hasis053341.blogspot.in/2014/07/ ... tos-7.html. This still wasn't sufficient to get rhythmbox going, which needed gstreamer1* plugins (using rpm -Uvh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el ... noarch.rpm).
yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer-plugins-bad-nonfree gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-base-tools gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1 ffmpeg libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd libdvdcss

j) Install other apps as per need:
yum install xterm screen expect tigervnc

k) There is a glitch when CentOS 7 starts up (output from dmesg) - this seems an open bug upstream - but things work OK in spite of it:
[ 0.688046] [drm:i915_stolen_to_physical] *ERROR* conflict detected with stolen region: [0x7f800000 - 0x80000000]

Regards,
Naren (Narendran Gopalakrishnan.)
Regards,
Narendran Gopalakrishnan.

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