Has anyone tried to install Gnome 3 desktop?

[p3732]

To give an update on this, Gnome Shell is running nicely on the latest Manjaro release. Been running it for some days now and things are smooth. Of course there are currently still the other issues with the hardware support remaining to be fixed, but the software site seems all good

[danielt]

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I've searched thru release notes for Buster and didn't find any info that Debian will not offer Gnome. Are you sure about that ?
I've also installed debian testing last week on one of my computers and it does have gnome as default.

As to the "cleanliness" of Debian I agree 100%. I use testing on my daily laptop for last 8 years or so without reinstall. I treat it as a rolling release and it works great.
I would like to use testing also on PBP but I think it will brake some optimizations. To actually run it  - we could use   a list of optimizations that were done to factory image that comes with new PBP. Unfotunately such a list is not available anywhere. Unless I'm missing something.

AS4000 :
 That was a day or two after Buster released,
    But I was back at the Debian site last night and saw nothing pertaining to Gnome being in-compible.

In general Gnome should works well in Debian Buster (and is the default desktop environment) however for RK3399 specifically then a very recent version of panfrost will also be required for Gnome to work and AFAIK this is only available in Debian Bullseye (testing).

I can certainly confirm that all works well for me with Debian Bullseye (with the v5.4 kernel from tsys).

[PakoSt]

@danielt , do you also get the stutters when navigating the Gnome menus? (opening the apps from activites being the extreme example)

[User 11436]

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I've searched thru release notes for Buster and didn't find any info that Debian will not offer Gnome. Are you sure about that ?
I've also installed debian testing last week on one of my computers and it does have gnome as default.

As to the "cleanliness" of Debian I agree 100%. I use testing on my daily laptop for last 8 years or so without reinstall. I treat it as a rolling release and it works great.
I would like to use testing also on PBP but I think it will brake some optimizations. To actually run it  - we could use   a list of optimizations that were done to factory image that comes with new PBP. Unfotunately such a list is not available anywhere. Unless I'm missing something.

AS4000 :
 That was a day or two after Buster released,
    But I was back at the Debian site last night and saw nothing pertaining to Gnome being in-compible.

In general Gnome should works well in Debian Buster (and is the default desktop environment) however for RK3399 specifically then a very recent version of panfrost will also be required for Gnome to work and AFAIK this is only available in Debian Bullseye (testing).

I can certainly confirm that all works well for me with Debian Bullseye (with the v5.4 kernel from tsys).

What's the RAM usage?

[bcnaz]

UPDATE:
I went back to the Debian site myself,  and found no mention of Gnome not being "Supported"
  HMmm,   It was 'News'  back when they first released Buster.

[danielt]

@danielt , do you also get the stutters when navigating the Gnome menus? (opening the apps from activites being the extreme example)

Not sure what effect you mean by stutters. I works pretty much as I expect although the switch between normal mode and activities view is not as smooth as on my regular laptop (with Intel graphics).

In general Gnome should work well in Debian Buster (and is the default desktop environment) however for RK3399 specifically then a very recent version of panfrost will also be required for Gnome to work and AFAIK this is only available in Debian Bullseye (testing).

I can certainly confirm that all works well for me with Debian Bullseye (with the v5.4 kernel from tsys).

What's the RAM usage?

365MiB when running with a 32-bit OS and 480MiB when running with a 64-bit OS.

In both cases this is a freshly booted system running nothing but the desktop, gnome-terminal and top. Likewise in both cases I left it a minute or two to quiesce since there were a couple of background activities launched just after boot (PackageKit refresh for example).

I know 32-bit should have smaller memory usage due to the smaller pointer size (and I believe for some workloads 32-bit code can be faster because it can make better use of the caches) but I'm actually rather surprised to see such a big difference. I'll have to see if there's a good way to visualize what is happening...

[bcnaz]

UPDATE:
I went back to the Debian site myself,  and found no mention of Gnome not being "Supported"
  HMmm,   It was 'News'  back when they first released Buster.

  SO :

            Can the Gnome Desktop be installed on the existing Pinebook Pro with OEM Debian  ?

             I saw somewhere the was mention of a conflict with the 'acceleration' assuming they were referring to graphics ?

             Our OEM  Debian is Stretch so perhaps that does not apply,  I do prefer Gnome over Mate.

              Thanks  !