Arch Linux

chmurli

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 51

[solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

hi,
Yesterday I upgraded my arch to gnome3 and today I reasiled that was HUGE mistake.
I want downgrade to gnome2 but I can't find old packages.
All I need is gnome2 old packages and I dont care about future updates. I am ready to not make any updates just to stay with gnome2, thats how I am desperate.

Last edited by chmurli (2011-05-05 07:36:39)

gun26

Member

Registered: 2007-07-05

Posts: 55

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

As an extremely short-term solution, if you've still got the gnome 2 packages in your /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory, you can reinstall those and stop upgrading your Arch (bad idea, especially from a security standpoint) or at least disable the extra repo in your /etc/pacman.conf before you upgrade again. This might keep you going for a very short while, but it will be measured in weeks rather than months. A better idea, if you're sticking with Arch, is to install the latest xfce which is pretty full-featured, gtk-2 based and a decent replacment for gnome 2. Or, you could stick with gnome 3 and force fallback rather than gnome-shell by using the system settings (gnome-control-center from the command line) and go to System Info, Graphics, and toggle the Force Fallback switch. This will approximate the gnome 2 interface with a menu and two panels, but it's very spartan compared to gnome 2.

If you're resolved to keep gnome 2 for more than a few weeks, you'll have to switch distros away from Arch - Debian has just shipped Squeeze with gnome 2 and at their rate of release they're probably 1-1/2 years away from the next stable release and gnome 3 (presuming gnome 3 will have made it to Debian testing by the time they release). So you'll be safe with gnome 2 for at least that long. SuSE has just shipped 11.4 with gnome 2 and they're on an 8-month release cycle, so you can keep gnome 2 for that long. The Linux Mint distro (either Ubuntu based or or Debian-based) is sticking with gnome 2 for now, so they're another possibility. And Ubuntu itself is still using gnome 2. At the gdm login, pick "ubuntu classic" instead of "ubuntu desktop" (which uses Unity which is similar in many ways to gnome-shell) and you'll get a very full featured gnome 2 desktop.

hoobastank

Member

Registered: 2010-03-30

Posts: 87

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

find my post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=115568&p=6

chmurli

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 51

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

@hoobastank
I dont have these local packages (make -Scc evry update couse low disk capacity) but I have found last mirror which is not updated yet (but tommorow propably will be)
http://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/

awaiting for 'real' gnome2 repo

Last edited by chmurli (2011-05-01 18:22:11)

hoobastank

Member

Registered: 2010-03-30

Posts: 87

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

so could you downgrade to gnome 2.x?

chmurli

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 51

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

yes, i did it using this mirror: ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/archlinux/

Zopper

Member

Registered: 2010-02-02

Posts: 15

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

Maybe could anyone upload all gnome2 packages in one archive? I was thinking I have all packages in cache, so I try upgrade, but now I found, I have only some.. Eg nautilus-action I have from half of year 2010, but nautilus itself only the latest version I didn't ever do cache cleaning, but maybe I lost it when I was migrating system and do not move the cache - and the nautilus package (and others) wasn't updated after this.

EDIT: I found this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 35#p926935 so I should be able to downgrade.

Last edited by Zopper (2011-05-04 19:14:15)

chmurli

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 51

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

I have found better solution. It's polish, google translate it
http://archcenter.org.pl/2011/05/03/prz … ji-2-32-1/

inp3dance

Member

Registered: 2008-06-23

Posts: 106

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

You can use the Arch Rollback Machine, as I did

ARM: http://arm.konnichi.com/search/
My post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=118034

triplesquarednine

Member

Registered: 2011-04-12

Posts: 630

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

hi,
Yesterday I upgraded my arch to gnome3 and today I reasiled that was HUGE mistake.
I want downgrade to gnome2 but I can't find old packages.
All I need is gnome2 old packages and I dont care about future updates. I am ready to not make any updates just to stay with gnome2, thats how I am desperate.

Really???

I abosolutely HATE gnome-shell, but Gnome3 and gnome-shell aren't the same thing - most people seem to not recoginze this!!!  Sure, you have to muck around a little to fix upgrade issues with gnome3 (as to be expected, a fresh released). but you can configure it fairly easily.  I'm using it with compiz, have it nicely themed, etc.

It isn't even all that different than gnome2 - just some of the tools are different, and certain tools need some love.

Follow this link to my screenshots of Gnome3 without Gnome-Shell, it's almost identical to my original gnome2 desktop, and in some ways is better.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=109664&p=3      (scroll down the page a bit - i have 3 pictures up)

jordan

Zopper

Member

Registered: 2010-02-02

Posts: 15

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

Well, I am not against gnome3/gnome shell, I only think, it is not complete yet. I had some stability issue and the panel-applets are important for me also (and ability to enable scrolling, etc). Gnome3 is fast on my machine, not as KDE4, so after few releases, I hope, I can switch on it permanently.

(NOTE: I successfully downgrade yet, but thanks for other links)

numega

Member

Registered: 2011-05-08

Posts: 1

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

I'm used ARM, so..
1) Change [extra] repository in /etc/pacman.conf

[extra]
Server = http://arm.konnichi.com/2011/04/30/extra/os/i686/
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

2) Then run

pacman -Syuu

3) Made changes of  /etc/pacman.conf

IgnorePkg   = libgdata vte evolution-data-server libgweather libgnomekbd gnome-menus gnome-bluetooth gnome-disk-utility gdl brasero libgnome-keyring
IgnoreGroup = gnome gnome-extra

and

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

4) Run

pacman -Syuu

Last edited by numega (2011-05-08 19:08:45)

RichardSantoro

Member

Registered: 2010-04-22

Posts: 29

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

Thx !

For those who want to try this, here are somes additionnals info :

- If you've replaced heimdal by krb5, uninstall krb5 with "pacman -Rd --nodeps krb5" and install heimdal by downlading the package on ARM.
- When ask for package remplacing, says "No".
- If you've got many "file already exists in filesystem", copy the output line to a text file, made a "cut -d' ' -f2 > /anotherfile" to keep just the paths, and finally move theim with à script : for i in $(cat /myfile);do mv $i /a-save-folder;done) and retry the pacman -Syuu

Zopper

Member

Registered: 2010-02-02

Posts: 15

Re: [solved] downgrading to gnome2 from gnome3

If you've got many "file already exists in filesystem",...

For this is in pacman --force, as I know.