Workaround: Gnome-Do Docky in Fedora 12
To my dismay, after installing Fedora 12, I soon realized that the famous “Docky” theme for Gnome-Do did not come stock. After some poking around their forums I saw that there was some legal issue between Gnome-Do and Apple. Blah blah blah, I have no time for Apple’s whining and pouting. They’re interfering with my FOSS-time. One person made it clear that even though this feature has been removed from the Fedora repos, you can always install Gnome-Do from source. Ha! What a noble idea, I thought to myself. I’ve gotten so used to repos and RPMs that I haven’t had to install anything from source in quite some time. Well- that alternative install method works and I jotted it down for ya’.
Where to Start
The first thing you should do is get your “development” environment ready to compile things from source. It’s pretty easy to do, just install some tools and libraries. In my case, I installed Fedora 12 from a LiveCD. That means it didn’t come with EVERYTHING pre-installed. No worries, just YUM-it-up!
The first thing I did was install a lot of tools and libraries via the “groupinstall” option:
# yum groupinstall "development tools" "development libraries"
That roughly installed about 149 packages. I then went to Gnome-Do’s web site and they suggested the following packages:
# yum install gtk2-devel gnome-sharp-devel gnome-desktop-sharp-devel gnome-keyring-sharp-devel mono-addins-devel ndesk-dbus-devel ndesk-dbus-glib-devel notify-sharp-devel GConf2-devel
This command yielded about 34 packages to be installed.
Up Next: Grab the Source File
Now go to Gnome-Do’s web site and try and find the source file! I say that jokingly, of course, they actually do a good job of pointing you to the right file. But for your convience, I have a direct link to gnome-do-0.8.2.tar.gz. Here’s the link to their launchpad site: https://edge.launchpad.net/do.
Last: Compilation
Once you’ve acquired the tarball- it’s time to unpackage the package and start the compilation process (sounds exciting, eh!?). Run these commands one at a time:
$ tar -xvzf gnome-do-0.8.2.tar.gz $ cd gnome-do-0.8.2 $ ./configure $ make # make install
The first time I ran Gnome-Do and tried to go into the “Preferences” section, it crashed on me. Simply try again. Find the “Appearance” tab and choose “Docky”. Oh the joy of seeing it load. I could be incorrect, but if it doesn’t load, you’ll need to run Compiz first. God speed my fellow FOSSventurers. Let me know if you had a good experience with getting Docky to work.
December 6th, 2009 at 12:50 am
I thought I would just let you know that fedora did not remove Docky due to any legal complaints from Apple. They removed it because they *think* there *might* be legal issues (however this has not been verified in a court of law). Apple has thus far done zippo with regard to Docky, this one is squarely on Fedora.
December 6th, 2009 at 1:11 am
What DBO said is correct. I’m the gnome-do fedora packager. Tom “spot” Callaway did a preemptive action and removed Docky entirely from gnome-do before receiving any sort of cease and desist.
As a result, I talked with gnome-do devs who helped me and created the patch to sacrifice the magnification functionality to appease the legal gods.
As a note, I am against crippled software, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Docky will no longer be shipped in gnome-do in future releases (It will become its own package, named Docky), I would have moved gnome-do to RPMFusion immediately.
I intend to send Docky to RPMFusion once its ready.
December 6th, 2009 at 9:00 am
I guess being preemptive is good, but if I understand your statements – Tom did this without there being any hint of legal action. This is just a hunch, or an educated guess. If we did that for apps in general, we’d really be crippling software development. Thus this awesome “Docky” option, so nicely packaged within Gnome-Do, now has to branch off into a new project based on a hunch.
I’ve been using Linux exclusively for about a year or so. So; I’m not fully there yet when it comes to the politics of package development/management, repos, legalities, etc.
I’m guessing that Fedora doesn’t want to be caught up in possible legal stuff, but RPMFusion is fine with it? So; Gnome-Do will be in the Fedora repos and Docky will be in RPMFusion repo. If that’s the case, then from a user perspective we still haven’t lost anything… just another package to install.
December 6th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
The branching out was already happening, regardless of Fedora’s actions.
The reason RPMFusion is in the clear, is that it’s not US-Based. This means that US Patents don’t apply to them, where as Fedora, being US-Based, has to obey the silly american laws.
The specific point i’m against is actually looking through the US Patent office just to see what violations you can find in the software you provide. Its ridiculous.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Yah, the US Patent Office is a complete joke. I sure hope that system is changes. Well thanks for the informative comment. It looks like every Fedora user should install RPMFusion’s repo as a common practice.
December 11th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Thanks….
December 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Thank you Toño for leaving a comment. Funny though… with all the comment spam we bloggers have to deal with now-a-days, even a simple well-intended comment such as yours leaves me wondering if “Tono” is a real person.
Either way, you’re welcome. I’m glad you found it helpful.