Requirements

You can use the “sudo apt-get install” command in a terminal if you can't find them in the add/remove package manager.

Requirement (package name/names)

  • XOrg Development packages (xorg-dev, xserver-xorg-dev, libglu1-xorg-dev, libXext-dev)
  • g++ (g++-3.4)
  • svn (subversion)
  • gettext

Downloading

EDE and EFLTK are not pre-compiled, so you'll need to download the source into a directory. You'll need to make a folder in the filesystem to hold the uncompiled source code. For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll make a directory (sourcecode) inside the home directory of the user “currentuser”. You should change “currentuser” to your login name for all of these terminal commands. If you want to use the terminal to create the directory, use the following command:

sudo mkdir /home/currentuser/sourcecode

Now it's time to get the source code (through subversion). Use a terminal and issue these commands:

cd /home/currentuser/sourcecode
svn co https://ede.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ede/trunk/efltk
svn co https://ede.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ede/trunk/ede

What's Happening: The first command changes the directory to your new sourcecode folder, and the other two commands “checkout” the latest subversion to your computer.

Compiling/Installing

EFLTK

Let's get to compiling! First, we need to compile EFLTK so that you can compile EDE. Use your terminal to issue these commands:

cd efltk
autoconf
./configure --disable-mysql --disable-unixODBC --enable-xft --prefix=/usr
./emake
sudo ./emake install

What's Happening: The first command changes to the efltk source directory. The second command makes EFLTK configurable before you compile. The third command actually configures EFLTK before you compile, which disables mysql and the unixODBC (which aren't necessary for EFLTK) and enables the anti-aliasing for fonts. The fourth and fifth lines compile and install EFLTK (respectively).

It is necessary to set option –prefix=/usr since Ubuntu (and a number of other distributions) is configured by default so that it can't read dynamic libraries from /usr/local - which is the standard location for software compiled from source. Alternatively, you may skip this option and enter command:

sudo cp /usr/local/lib/*efltk* /usr/lib

EDE

Now that EFLTK is installed, you can can compile EDE! In your terminal, issue these commands:

cd ../ede
autoconf
./configure
make
sudo make install

What's Happening: The first command changes the directory to the EDE source directory (assuming your terminal is still in the EFLTK source directory). The second command again makes the source code configurable before you compile. The third command just prepares you to compile, and the 4th command compiles. The fifth command installs EDE.

Equinox as a Desktop Session

Now that you've got EDE installed, you need to add a desktop session to the log in screen (so that you can actually use EDE). Issue these commands in your terminal:

sudo chmod 777 /usr/share/xsessions
gedit /usr/share/xsessions/EQUINOX.desktop

What's Happening: The first command gives you the ability to create a new session for the Ubuntu login screen. The second command will open up the text editor to create the session.

Now that you've got a text editor open, you need to enter these lines:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Equinox
Exec=startede
Icon=
Type=Application
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=Equinox Desktop Environment 1.1

Save the file and exit. Now you need to go back and reset the file permissions for the xsessions folder, so issue this command in your terminal:

sudo chmod 755 /usr/share/xsessions

Now that it's all done and said for, you can finally close down your terminal and log off. When logging in, you can choose to use the Equinox Session through your options menu (the “Options” button at the bottom left of the login screen). It will probably ask you if you want to make it your default session, select, “Just for this session” for now - since you'll want to test and make sure it all works before you make it the default (should you want to).

Themes

The easiest way to get themes for EDE is by “checking out” the themes from the subversion. Use a terminal to issue these commands:

cd /home/currentuser
svn co https://ede.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ede/trunk/themes

What's Happening: The first command takes you to currentuser's home directory, and the second command downloads the themes.

You now have all the “themes” folder in currentuser's home directory. You can now apply them while using EDE.

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