GARNOME

Have you ever heard of GARNOME? It’s an easy way to install the latest stable or CVS GNOME release without affecting the operating system. For example, a user can download GARNOME and build the whole GNOME desktop with some extra applications. The whole release is installed by default in the ~/garnome/ directory and it does not affect the rest of the operating system. Cool, huh? A little simple script editting is required though before being able to log in the new GNOME 2.12 environment.

You can find GARNOME here.
Be sure to check the documentation and FAQ for extra info.

An important thing to know is that if you log into GARNOME using your normal user, all configuration files in your home directory will be modified according to the the 2.12 release. So, it would be more wise to use a test user to build and use GARNOME.

I tried to build GARNOME with

# make paranoid-install

but it got stuck in gnome-pilot. It could not download a patch file. Anyway most of the applications had already been compiled and installed, so I logged into the partially installed GARNOME. There are many improvements in 2.12 and it gives a sense of robustness more than ever.

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