[arch-general] Arch is ummnn different: my 1st installation: tried to install xfce...OOPS!

[Jeffrey Parke]

On 03/15/2010 01:19 AM, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> Hello, I've been using various Linux distros for a while now. I just
> decided to give Arch Linux a try. But I'm a little bit lost. I'm used to
> distros like Xubuntu, PCLinuxOS, OpenSuSE, etc... Where I don't need to
> personally understand what order I need to install which packages to get
> at least one GUI desktop up&  running...
>
> The install itself went ok. But I needed to add a few things.
>
> First I used the list of typical tasks for pacman from the installation
> guide, to figure out how to look for a package and install it with pacman.
>
> I installed mc and vim without a problem. Then I thought it would be nice
> if I could get a desktop up. I did a:
>
> pacman -Si xfce|less
>
> and looked for a package that might get me to a minimal desktop I could work with.
> I thought maybe xfdesktop...
>
> pacman -S xfdesktop
>
> It wanted (I think) 26 packages to satisfy the dependencies... Sounded low
> to me but what do I know? I figured the next step would be to ask for help
> (or a good step by step how-to) But sooner or later I was going to want
> xfce so I said yes...
>
> I didn't get any errors until the last package (xfdesktop itself) Then there was
> an error with a line number (oops I didn't write it down) And I think something
> about gtk&  icons, (something not existing...)<sigh>  {If I'd figured out
> how to activate GPM I'd have pasted the error into a text file so that I
> could accurately report what it said.}
>
> When pacman reports an error, listing just one line number like that,
> does it stop processing. Or does the fact that there was only one error
> (about icons I think) mean that everything else in the package installed
> successfully???
>
> More to the point: Will I need to figure out how to uninstall xfdesktop to resolve
> the error?
>
> Could some nice Arch user point me at enough step by step instructions so
> that I can get enough of a gui up to use a browser like firefox so I can
> try to find solutions via the web while Arch is actually running???
>
> Please!
>
>    
  Have you read the beginners guide? It's a great help for times like 
these, I'll post it below.  Well what you wanna do now is to install the 
xorg group (pacman -S xorg) then the xfce group (pacman -S xfce4). Then 
move the .xinitrc file to your home folder (cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc/ 
/home/user/.xinitrc); edit this file to so that the line with startxfce4 
is uncommented (in other words has a '#' in front of it. Finally, run 
'startx'

But do read the beginners guide, it is a very nice page that details all 
of these steps and more.


http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide