Helix Gnome is a comprehensive, easy-to-install desktop environment and suite of applications available to the Linux user.
The Helix Updater provides one-click, real-time updates to the user's desktop.
Helix Gnome also ships with a complete software development platform, and the tools you need to write modern applications.
This talk will be an introduction to Helixcode, installing and using Helix Gnome.
Most distributions have release cycles that can vary from 6 months to 2.5 years. This means that the Gnome desktop that ship with distributions could be out of date on the day that the distribution ships. Helix Gnome provides an update tool that can help keep your desktop current. Bug fixes and updates are provided faster than distribution updates. Hardly a week goes by without at least some updates being released from Helix.
On most systems, this involves downloading and running the Helix installer. The Helix installer is avalable at:
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/helixcode/installer-latest-intel.gz
The following commands will uncompress and run the Helix installer:
$ gzip -d installer-latest-intel.gz
$ chmod +x installer-latest-intel
$ su (enter superuser password when prompted)
$ ./installer-latest-intel
Alternatively, you can do the following:
lynx -dump go-gnome.com | sh
I don't recomend this however.
You will then be greeted with the following screen:
Click the Next button and you are prompted for the package source. You can choose from a Helix Code mirror, a local cdrom, packages that you have downloaded downloaded to your harddrive manually or another network source. This is the option I have chosen and added the AARNET mirror as my prefered source.
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/helixcode/
After clicking on next, you will be prompted for a proxy to use. I suggest that you enter the proxy information supplyed to you by your ISP.
Next. Select the components you want installed. Selecting "Install everything" will cause 79.7 megabytes to be downloaded and installed. Make sure you have a fast link.
Next. The download starts. If the download fails part way through, restart the installer and the download will continue from where it left off.
Next. The installer prepares the system to install Helix Gnome.
Next. You can choose to use your current login manager or the version of Gdm supplied with Helix Gnome.
Next. All done. Now you must restart your session.
A freshly installed Helix Gnome desktop running on RedHat 6.2
Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/helixcode/distributions/debian
unstable main
Then run the following commands as root:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install task-helix-gnome
If you wish to develop for Helix Gnome or to compile Gnome programs, you should also run:
# apt-get install task-helix-gnome-dev
The easiest way to run Helix Gnome is to choose "Use the GNOME login manager by default" at the apropriate point in the installation. On a RedHat system, you will have to change the default runlevel to 5 in /etc/inittab if you have not already done so. On a Debian sytem, GDM should start automatically once installed, if it does not, simply type:
# /etc/init.d/gdm start
as root.
Configuring Helix Gnome is done through the Gnome Control Panel.
Helix Gnome comes with all the productivity applications you would expect on a desktop. This includes:
Bug buddy walks you through the process of reporting bugs.
Developing for Helix Gnome is the same as developing for Gnome. The Gnome website has a lot of documentation available.
OpenOffice will be componentised and integrated with Gnome.
Evolution will be available as an email client/PIM.
Nautilus from Eazel will replace GMC as a file manager.
Bonobo will be the component architecture for creating reusable components and compound documents.