Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

kuglee · 2011-09-02 18:16:36

chenxiaolong wrote:

EDIT: Running Unity after starting Compiz results in "compiz (unityshell) - Error: GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object not supported".

It's a bug in fglrx, if you're using an ATI card.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/832681

chenxiaolong · 2011-09-02 21:01:39

kuglee: Thanks for the link, but it doesn't apply to me. I'm using an nVidia Quadro 2000m on the computer listed in my signature.

I just finished recompiling all of the Compiz packages with the Ubuntu patches. Compiz-core tool especially long. I've probably recompiled it 20 times... Its build system is so inconsistent. For Compiz to compile, I also had to recompile Metacity with the Ubuntu patches. All my packages have the suffix "-ubuntu" added to them. I'd be glad to upload my packages if someone knows of a file hosting site that doesn't have obnoxious limits or ads.

With the patched Compiz packages, Unity loads a little further and then crashes with an error about "utouch-geis." I've read somewhere that the utouch-* packages require Xorg patches, so yeah...more compiling... I swear that the part of my desk under the laptop fan will turn into a different color after all this.

EDIT: Here are my packages so far: (wget hates Ubuntu One, so just download with your browser)

glib2-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1For/
sha512sum:

6e04215b0ad343cd8e909e98a16e2d48a8d8d7e3702f74ae9d7f94e218d4d34d5515ce9c8e622a1c9a57b96c6e0bf604e5c2489981e1a152f3cdc69c8fb9931b

pango-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fos/
sha512sum:

2eb56427e2eb58a0f70d3babc05412bd522bb96fcee864092a45ed94c4733f1a715482765fb693dbc4b7a3f393686a77196e4fa92cb4b1202ae9146f8376f508

gtk3-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fot/
sha512sum:

c49677327800f78aeb12bbadeea72f9d7c1dd089e3c3179eee27356a0dc5db316648eae012b180792c88d73ffe9de121b4a794244a2da9b1e45f5c73ddab697e

metacity-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fou/
sha512sum:

2bbdba4d4458fcfef741eaaacd534880da2b0cfd687755b516da30d656580eb663eacdfeeeff92259f612ea1b88d9506887f48c27e880d16f95439476742d911

libindicator: Read comments of AUR package. Update to >= 0.3.93

compiz-core-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fow/
sha512sum:

89de4ffbbb9e65368172d4b4b74da16842dd8e53d0a19e2936f35c46a814548d01c9f11581263e5373cec19fa0f163f21edd75de569e8647deac9171615dfd13

libcompizconfig-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Foy/
sha512sum:

322922885a0072d851050b28cd984637580af09270b9defd56f94255c411f597f7bed0dea6552c3fd6110a22f2302149c4c5fa8c99c6569a760b5336d4367b65

compizconfig-python-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Foz/
sha512sum:

bb7ff0794f1bb7f2722b9fa2177c30c862ec4b50f8494dac137c8f898424fc3445006111134da3832db88dd8be93818d90c6c0f5923ab8451b245ea27a2dbdc1

ccsm-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fp2/
sha512sum:

73ec66cad635d24d066ab73cbff0fa8574f771e13c2e808b7cb810f8f4206115c116b10b900847ed596a58f91141c0acfdbad683e5a5f4f139a19132653dceb5

compizconfig-backend-gconf-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fp3/
sha512sum:

d3246f6a8b2d546e9ae2f6efcdf90d365f672f49f512f256c0a65deda0e1cc35ed9a093d4ab753778db0a33f68d8cffdc8831431581fa1f3540d5fe9526e753a

compizconfig-backend-kconfig4-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fp5/ (DOES NOT COMPILE)
sha512sum:

e1f072e27b7c65250be92bb1499bdc4c4966d64d44b96d6cfa57b874e3ff30a283f2e61f3d40d99f77ca1de1e0065f714fd73ac2abc91f45db6abf30f5e9eb4b

compiz-plugins-main-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fp7/
sha512sum:

b0c8bc424595e187590517d7af51e484cf9dbe7d8638a912d9d7670988f8ea65c40028510c8d7931e28202f96af4b45b3d9be73628962b1a7e67cea1a605635c

compiz-plugins-extra-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1Fp9/
sha512sum:

82e6772379030088ebdbeee4567ed38eb5e2821b0c6a15ff9f469e935f05652e46cd452604b913e9af0375821765aef89500ae7e2e676a87666c91f619819856

utouch-geis-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1FpB/
sha512sum:

9f22ae6679d332db0c6c8dc87c994e1814a3ddd3afd4f7d55266ba16d72bca23408d180d50b25f679d5991dd13cdcfe85f594f2907f1b2db85c8e9c4fde7a62a

unity-ubuntu: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1FpC/
sha512sum:

9d3ac8a909a946a39fb6eb387aace07e61105aa176b3aea24e7e61bc49dae7f2df905ebeecadbb7a9cc75f3d890bea51781a762241890a14567c66ddae302f96

All packages with the "*-ubuntu" suffix contain Ubuntu patches.

Last edited by chenxiaolong (2011-09-02 21:26:13)

Durden · 2011-09-02 22:06:18

I would welcome Unity on arch. I don't have the problems with it other people do. My only gripe with Unity is it's reliance on compiz which runs horribly on my system. It just doesn't seem to like my graphics card, nvidia GTX 460.

I'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it progresses. If I can help in some way I will.

thn81 · 2011-09-03 19:57:25

I stumbled across a thread about running Unity on Arch a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to hack on an Archlinux port of Unity myself. I went through the dependencies of Unity and decided to port the Unity2D variant, as I didn't feel like fiddling around with compiz and the obscure Unity compiz plugins.
To get going, I started with the ayatana packages made by City-busz (thanks for the great work, by the way!) and the outdated AUR packages for Unity2D, updated them and tried to get a working Unity desktop. Basically I had two major problems: Firstly, several important system libraries like QT and GTK have to be patched with Canonical's extensions, so I had to build/modify the existing packages. Secondly, Arch is package-version-wise ahead of Ubuntu, so some of the Unity packages didn't even compile or exposed strange behavior when used with more recent library versions.
However, I got pretty far. Now I have a (mostly) working Unity-Desktop using Unity2D, nautilus and the indicator packages (see screenshots). There are still some loose ends: Missing icons, occasional crashes and empty menus. But I'll keep working on it.

Screenshots:
http://h55.img-up.net/?up=unity-appm2jct.png
http://y67.img-up.net/?up=unity-desk9sey.png
http://u49.img-up.net/?up=unity-dashaxiz.png
http://q56.img-up.net/?up=unity-plac4mta.png

DustinCasler · 2011-09-03 22:49:17

thn81 wrote:

I stumbled across a thread about running Unity on Arch a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to hack on an Archlinux port of Unity myself. I went through the dependencies of Unity and decided to port the Unity2D variant, as I didn't feel like fiddling around with compiz and the obscure Unity compiz plugins.
To get going, I started with the ayatana packages made by City-busz (thanks for the great work, by the way!) and the outdated AUR packages for Unity2D, updated them and tried to get a working Unity desktop. Basically I had two major problems: Firstly, several important system libraries like QT and GTK have to be patched with Canonical's extensions, so I had to build/modify the existing packages. Secondly, Arch is package-version-wise ahead of Ubuntu, so some of the Unity packages didn't even compile or exposed strange behavior when used with more recent library versions.
However, I got pretty far. Now I have a (mostly) working Unity-Desktop using Unity2D, nautilus and the indicator packages (see screenshots). There are still some loose ends: Missing icons, occasional crashes and empty menus. But I'll keep working on it.
Screenshots:
http://h55.img-up.net/?up=unity-appm2jct.png
http://y67.img-up.net/?up=unity-desk9sey.png
http://u49.img-up.net/?up=unity-dashaxiz.png
http://q56.img-up.net/?up=unity-plac4mta.png

Those screenshots look great so far. Thanks again to everyone working on this for all the hard work and effort. I'd love to see this become a reality.

chenxiaolong · 2011-09-03 23:10:20

thn81: That's awesome! So Unity is halfway ported So far, all the package versions in the 11.10 Oneiric repo match up with the Arch Linux package versions (with the exception of the GNOME libraries), so I would suggest getting the patches from there if you aren't doing that already.

thn81 · 2011-09-04 09:34:22

chenxiaolong wrote:

So far, all the package versions in the 11.10 Oneiric repo match up with the Arch Linux package versions (with the exception of the GNOME libraries), so I would suggest getting the patches from there if you aren't doing that already.

Yes, I am indeed doing that already, but the problem is that Arch will keep updating the packages while Ubuntu will freeze them at a specific version number for 11.10 release. So sooner or later the patches won't apply cleanly to the Arch versions anymore. For example, QT was updated to 4.7.4 in Arch where Ubuntu is still at 4.7.3. Believe it or not, this simple update to 4.7.4 broke Unity (launcher didn't start anymore)! I eventually succeeded in fixing that, but keeping Arch packages in sync with Ubuntu modifications will be hard work.

Last edited by thn81 (2011-09-04 09:34:53)

chenxiaolong · 2011-09-04 14:48:52

Wow. I guess Ubuntu packages are pretty dependant on specific versions of software.

xunil9025 · 2011-09-05 19:21:51

Thanks everyone who is working on this. I think many people will like it especially because the gnome developers dumped gnome 2 for gnome shell .I tried the Ubuntu daily iso and Unity it's very good, the ubuntu developers made some improvements.
Who is going to use gnome-shell? They made it to annoy users.
The gnome developers are not using gnome-shell because it annoy's them they probably use windows.

Last edited by xunil9025 (2011-09-06 08:03:32)

Rasi · 2011-09-05 19:53:40

xunil9025 wrote:

Thanks everyone who is working on this. I think many people will like it especially because the gnome developers dumped gnome 2

Of course you know, that unity is based on gnome3 and dumped gnome2 just like gnome-shell did.

xunil9025 · 2011-09-06 08:16:34

What I tried to say is I like gnome 3 but I hate the gnome shell.
The gnome developers made some garbage they betrayed us, they made the gnome 3 desktop to annoy users.
I tried gnome3 shell many times but it's to slow and crashes. Unity works much better with gnome 3.

Durden · 2011-09-06 14:25:22

"Betrayed" us? I think you're taking this all a little too seriously

flamelab · 2011-09-06 15:49:45

xunil9025 wrote:

What I tried to say is I like gnome 3 but I hate the gnome shell.
The gnome developers made some garbage they betrayed us, they made the gnome 3 desktop to annoy users.
I tried gnome3 shell many times but it's to slow and crashes. Unity works much better with gnome 3.

Εven though i'm a KDE user, I used GNOME 3 for about 1 month, just in order to check it. It never crashed here, even though I installed a LOT of extensions (which improved functionality in a much better way), another theme (GTK3+Gnome shell) and icons. No prob at all. Nvidia proprietary driver here.

xunil9025 · 2011-09-06 19:31:19

@Durden
Yes they went another way with gnome unexpected, people like it to have two simple panels and not some bloated unusable shell,
Even Linus Torvald also hates this GNOME-3 shell. He even switched to Xcfe desktop environment.

@flamelab
After a fresh install it crashed with no reason it went in to falback mode. and clicking on the keyboard applet made it crash.
If you had no problems why did u switch to kde?

Last edited by xunil9025 (2011-09-06 19:32:43)

flamelab · 2011-09-06 21:04:18

xunil9025 wrote:

@Durden
Yes they went another way with gnome unexpected, people like it to have two simple panels and not some bloated unusable shell,
Even Linus Torvald also hates this GNOME-3 shell. He even switched to Xcfe desktop environment.
@flamelab
After a fresh install it crashed with no reason it went in to falback mode. and clicking on the keyboard applet made it crash.
If you had no problems why did u switch to kde?

No, I tested it only for a month, my main (and only) desktop is KDE. It was for testing purposes only.

Padfoot · 2011-09-07 07:23:50

Good luck to all who are trying to get Unity running on Arch. Personally not my cup of tea.

The persistent problem you are going to encounter though is that the entire *buntu universe is just so heavily patched (I see from earlier posts you have even had to patch Xorg, just for a WM????????? what next, patch the kernel too???). It is the complete opposite of the Arch way (KISS and unpatched). Also, as Arch is rolling release, you are going to encounter many more issues unless you no longer update your system until *buntu does, even then you will find yourself having to re-patch and re-compile every time.

This is also a big reason as to why other distros will be reluctant to pick up and maintain things like app indicators and unity. *buntu packages are patched beyond recognition that makes it a very big undertaking to get them running with other distro's packages....Instead of referring to "compiling Unity on Arch" I see in earlier posts we are referring to "porting Unity to Arch" suggesting a different OS....

Perhaps that is what Canonical are up to.....doing an Apple (taking BSD and perverting it beyong recognition, slapping their own badge on it then sell, sell sell....) - (tongue in cheek!!)

Anyway, just my 2 cents worth, or maybe $2 by the size of this post, but good on you for giving it a good bash...perhaps posting a before and after pic of yourself would be a good idea so we can see how much hair you lose in the process

Cheers.

Last edited by Padfoot (2011-09-07 07:27:07)

thn81 · 2011-09-07 14:04:42

Padfoot wrote:

The persistent problem you are going to encounter though is that the entire *buntu universe is just so heavily patched (I see from earlier posts you have even had to patch Xorg, just for a WM????????? what next, patch the kernel too???).

Luckily I did not have to patch X.Org or the kernel (yet), but you're right, some "core" libraries (GTK2/3, QT) are patched with about two dozen patches. Not all are necessary for Unity, though. You'll just have to find out which ones..

Padfoot wrote:

It is the complete opposite of the Arch way (KISS and unpatched). Also, as Arch is rolling release, you are going to encounter many more issues unless you no longer update your system until *buntu does, even then you will find yourself having to re-patch and re-compile every time.

Agreed, patching system libraries beyond recognition like Ubuntu does definitely won't make the Arch devs happy. So I don't think Unity will land in the community repo in the near future and certainly not in [extra] as an alternative to GNOME3. Porting Unity to Arch is more like a fun project for me (I just like to understand how that thing works), although sometimes I have the impression of porting Arch to Unity...

Cheers, thn81

chenxiaolong · 2011-09-07 22:27:11

thn81 wrote:

although sometimes I have the impression of porting Arch to Unity...

LOL!

chenxiaolong · 2011-09-08 19:32:37

Unfortunately, I started having this problem for no apparent reason yesterday: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=988227

I'm probably going to need to reinstall Arch to fix it, so there probably won't be any progress on Unity for a few days.

chenxiaolong · 2011-10-02 22:44:42

Good news and bad news (well, not really). The good news is that I found out where Unity stops loading by diffing the verbose outputs of Unity under Arch Linux and Ubuntu. Unity stalls under Arch Linux right before the lines that read:

Screen geometry changed:
  Monitor 0(primary)
   0x0x1920x1080

A quick search shows that that message is outputted from utouch-geis (the multitouch stack in Ubuntu). The bad news is that I've also been trying to port utouch for a while now, but have been unsuccessful. With all of Ubuntu's patches, Xorg just crashes without any logs or output

More good news though: Ubuntu is already working on a newer version of utouch that won't require Xorg patches. That, hopefully, will be completed by the end of the year.

thn81 · 2011-10-07 20:18:40

I finished porting Unity to Arch and created a tree of PKGBUILDs which can be used to build a (hopefully) working Unity desktop environment. I'll post them here just in case anybody is interested in them. The PKGBUILDs are mainly based on existing AUR ones, I modified them slightly and put all the necessary ones together in one archive. Please note that the whole thing is completely unsupported and experimental. Be careful when compiling and installing the packages. The archive contains a README file in which you will find instructions. Please read it before you start! I doubt that my PKGBUILDs are Arch-conform in any way, so these probably shouldn't go to AUR.
Have fun with Unity and thanks to all authors of the PKGBUILDs I used.

thn81

Link to archive: http://www.mediafire.com/?4osxth3xncojo1j

Edit: [2011/10/09]: Updated to Ver. 1.2, download link updated.
Some packages must be recompiled, see ChangeLog for details.

Last edited by thn81 (2011-10-09 18:20:37)

RichAustin · 2011-10-07 21:10:09

OT but it made me laugh when I Googled "tfyp. itualipw." and got this as the top find:

Urban Dictionary: TFYP
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFYP16 Jan 2008 – TFYP. an Acronym for: Trap For Young Players. In Geylang, Singapore, the Ladyboy is a TFYP because of the prescence of a schlong and...

Makes you wonder what "itualipw" means!

@chenxiaolong: Keep up the good work on this and thanks!

chenxiaolong · 2011-10-08 01:05:52

thn81: Nice! I'll test out your PKGBUILD's How did you manage to get utouch working though? It requires Xorg patches to work (which crash Xorg for me)...

RichAustin: Thanks for the words of encouragement!

thn81 · 2011-10-08 08:53:08

chenxiaolong wrote:

How did you manage to get utouch working though?

I didn't. I simply disabled it by patching utouch-geis and unity-2d. It now silently fails to enable utouch and continues loading.

chenxiaolong · 2011-10-08 15:33:56

libappindicator no longer compiles due to a problem in the perl-xml-sax package. I'm guessing there's something wrong with the packaging since other packages that depend on it are failing to run/install also.

Last edited by chenxiaolong (2011-10-08 15:34:10)

Arch Linux

#26 2011-09-02 18:16:36

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#27 2011-09-02 21:01:39

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#28 2011-09-02 22:06:18

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#29 2011-09-03 19:57:25

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#30 2011-09-03 22:49:17

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#31 2011-09-03 23:10:20

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#32 2011-09-04 09:34:22

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#33 2011-09-04 14:48:52

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#34 2011-09-05 19:21:51

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#35 2011-09-05 19:53:40

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#36 2011-09-06 08:16:34

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#37 2011-09-06 14:25:22

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#38 2011-09-06 15:49:45

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#39 2011-09-06 19:31:19

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#40 2011-09-06 21:04:18

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#41 2011-09-07 07:23:50

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#42 2011-09-07 14:04:42

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#43 2011-09-07 22:27:11

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#44 2011-09-08 19:32:37

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#45 2011-10-02 22:44:42

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#46 2011-10-07 20:18:40

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#47 2011-10-07 21:10:09

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#48 2011-10-08 01:05:52

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#49 2011-10-08 08:53:08

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

#50 2011-10-08 15:33:56

Re: Progress on Unity under Arch Linux!

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