Jesse Ross | jesseross.com

Hilarious. Watch it!

I’m supposedly involved in Etoile and GNUstep. But — don’t tell anyone — I never really learned how to install GNUstep on Linux. Shhhhh!!! I know, I know. I’ve been faking it this whole time. You get Ubuntu installed, do a little sudo apt-get install gnustep, fight with dependencies, and try to make your way. When you realize you can’t get a single thing to work, you blast your install away and start from scratch.

Today, I had had enough. So I started Adium, found Nicolas, and tricked him into helping me do a proper install.

I grabbed the latest netinst of Debian, installed it, and proceeded to harass Nicolas, pinging him everytime I had no idea what to do. Here’s what it comes down to.

First, log in as root.

Then, get sudo.

     # apt-get install sudo

Then add yourself to the sudoers list:

     # vi /etc/sudoers

When that comes up, arrow down to the bottom line, the last character, then type i, then hit the right arrow once, then hit enter, then enter your username, a space, and ALL=(ALL) ALL. So, if you were me, you’d see something like:

root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
jross   ALL=(ALL) ALL

Since you’re using vi, things are a bit weird, but what you do next is hit the Esc key, then type:

:w!
:q

After that, you’ll have exited vi. Next, you’ll want to upgrade your repositories, since with the netinst you’ll have only stable. You’re gonna want testing and unstable, so do this (via Debian Reference):

     # cd /etc/apt
     # cp -f sources.list sources.list.old
     # :>sources.list
     # apt-setup noprobe
     # cd /etc/apt
     # grep -e "^deb " sources.list >srcs
     # :>sources.list
     # cp -f srcs sources.list
     # sed -e "s/stable/testing/" srcs >>sources.list
     # sed -e "s/stable/unstable/" srcs >>sources.list
     # apt-get update
     # apt-get install apt apt-utils

After you’ve done that, then you can type exit, and log in as yourself.

Okay, now, the dependencies part.

GNUstep depends on a lot of things, but luckily you can use apt-get to install them. So, type in all of the following, and, with each one, you’ll likely get a prompt saying that there are other things that need to be installed. Just hit enter when you see something that looks like [Y|n]

     # sudo apt-get install libtiff4-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev
     # sudo apt-get install gobjc
     # sudo apt-get install make
     # sudo apt-get install subversion
     # sudo apt-get install bzip2
     # sudo apt-get install libart-2.0-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
     # sudo apt-get install xlibs-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libffcall1-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
     # sudo apt-get install xserver-common
     # sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg
     # sudo apt-get install xbase-clients

You’ll have a bunch of strange questions thrown at you when you install the xserver stuff… If you know what kind of video card you have, then you’re in the clear. If you don’t, then you’re SOL. I can’t help you there. That is what ultimately caused my downfall (see below).

If you get through the above list okay, then type:

     # cd ~

That will bring you to your home directory. Now, you’ll need to checkout GNUstep from its Subversion repository:

     # svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/modules

This part takes a long time. Go grab something to eat, then come back. After you’ve gotten everything, you should have a folder called modules. You can type ls to confirm.

If you see the folder, then do the following:

     # cd modules/core/make
     # ./configure
     # make

At this point, it’s good to make a new terminal session. So, hit Alt-F2, and you’ll have a new terminal session. You can go back to the first one by typing Alt-F1. You can basically make a new terminal session for each of your function keys. In this new session, log in as yourself, then type:

     # sudo bash

Change directories to the modules folder in your home folder, then go to core/make

Now, you can source GNUstep and install:

     # . /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh
     # make install

Now, you’re gonna want to compile each of the major sections of GNUstep: base, gui and back. Here is the process:

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # . /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh
     # cd ../base
     # ./configure
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../base
     # make install

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # cd ../gui
     # ./configure
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../gui
     # make install

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # cd ../back
     # ./configure --enable-graphics=art
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../back
     # make install

Apparently, after you’ve done all this, you should be able to switch back to terminal session 1, type startx, then do something to check the GUI by going into modules/tests/examples/gui/

That was as far as I got before my screen went black. Maybe you’ll have better luck… As for me, I’m back to square one, installing Ubuntu… I think my install disc didn’t get burned properly.

Open source… argh.

Sometimes, everything in your day goes wrong.

Except for that one thing, but it happens in such a way that everything that comes after it sucks. And then you forget about that one good thing until you start writing a journal entry. But you are still bitter, so you still act pissed off and continue with the entry. Then you get distracted, and in your distraction you become even more pissed off, and when you come back from your distraction, you continue writing. Cause you’re pissed. And everyone should know about it.

Honestly, what the hell is wrong now?