GNOME SlackBuild is a complete GNOME Desktop Environment for Slackware Linux 12.1.

GNOME SlackBuild is a complete GNOME Desktop Environment for Slackware Linux 12.1, encompassing all the needed packages for a full, clean installation of GNOME for Slackware. It aims to provide a fully functional desktop, including a wide range of multimedia, graphics, and development tools, as well as a complete networking and office suite.

GNOME SlackBuild is unique in that it is designed to be a twofold project. Its aim is not only to provide users with binary packages for an easy installation of GNOME, but also a full GNOME Build System, with the goal of allowing individuals to customise and build their own GNOME packages for their Slackware system.

GNOME SlackBuild Distribution

This is our binary GNOME distribution for Slackware Linux. It encompasses all needed packages for a fully configurable, customizable and usable GNOME desktop environment for Slackware. There have been a lot of improvements in GNOME 2.20.3, which include better desktop searching, a more organized Evolution email and calendar client, enhanced image browsing, simplified control panel, efficient power management, and powerful desktop tools, as well as a great new documentation web site.

GNOME SlackBuild is designed to bring the greatest features of GNOME to Slackware, integrating seamlessly into a standard install. It uses the standard Slackware package system, and aims to replace as few packages as possible. For a list of packages that require updating, please see the replaced packages file.

GNOME Slackbuild also aims to provide a fully functional desktop, and comes with a wide variety of applications in order to create a full desktop environment for any user. We have created a short list of featured applications, covering areas such as document management, office software, multimedia, graphic design, and software development.

GNOME SlackBuild Build System

The build system is full and complete GSB source code we use to generate our binary distribution. It is a collection of SlackBuild scripts that build a GNOME release on Slackware Linux. It also comes with a download script to grab all the latest source tarball for every package that GSB can build.

Downloading

The GNOME source files, and source for all the other packages are not distributed with GSB, but part of the build process will download the source files for you. Our download script is written in Perl, and is organized into sections for easy customization. Version numbers, and download locations for all the software packages in GSB are kept up-to-date, and you'll be able to specify local mirrors to help speed up your downloads. The majority of the packages come from either GNOME Mirrors, or Sourceforge; however a few packages have their own individual web site and no local mirrors will be available. Your download speeds will vary according to your connection, and you need an active internet connection to download the sources.

Building

The source tree is governed by a gsb.SlackBuild, which will run build scripts for each of the sections of the GSB Project. GSB has been broken into logical sections, such as libraries, platform, desktop, applications, and so on. In turn, each section has its own master build script which controls what packages and in what order things are compiled and installed for that section. Within each section, each individual package has its own SlackBuild script which will configure, compile, and build its own Slackware package.

The GSB Build System is aimed at all levels of users. Those who are new to Slackware or to Linux as a whole will find the GSB Build System easy to use, and rather simple to modify. Intermediate and advanced users will find it heavily customizable, and will be pleased to find that the majority of the grunt work in designing and building packages is done for them; they will be free to tweak or patch any packages to their own taste.

What's New in This Release:

· There have been a lot of improvements in this latest GSB release, including the move to PulseAudio, fewer package replacements, a GNOME-integrated Compiz-Fusion setup, the latest NetworkManager, Abiword 2.6, and OpenOffice2.4, a richer Mono C# suite, as well as all the great features of GNOME 2.22.