What is the difference between "Desktop" and "General Purpose Desktop" package groups in RHEL?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Issue

  • What are the different package groups you need to install for different types of RHEL desktop systems?

Resolution

A list of RHEL 6 package groups that are associated with desktop systems:

  • Desktop - Provides a minimal GNOME desktop environment. This includes metacity (window manager), nautilus (file manager), NetworkManager (graphical network management tool), and a set of gnome-* packages (providing panel, power manager, screen saver, audio, terminal and other basic GNOME elements).

  • General Purpose Desktop - Adds other GNOME applications to a minimal GNOME desktop. These include a text editor (gedit), Webcam application (cheese), file archiver (file-roller), system monitor (gnome-system-monitor), audio player (rhythmbox) movie player (totem) and many others.

  • KDE Desktop - Provides packages needed to configure a KDE desktop environment (which can be used instead of GNOME). Packages in this group include basic KDE software (kdebase), CD/DVD burning software (k3b), games (kdegames), graphical login screen (kdm), and other basic KDE software.

  • X Window System - Includes packages that provide the basic X Window System framework and related video card drivers that are used by GNOME, KDE and other desktop environments and window managers. Added utilities include tools for testing desktop performance (glx-utils) and setting X attributes (xvattr).

  • Remote Desktop Clients - Provides packages that include graphical applications for accessing remote systems. These include remote desktop protocol clients (rdesktop), virtual network computing clients (tigervnc) and others.

  • Desktop Debugging and Performance Tools - Provides packages that contain graphical tools for debugging applications and testing performance. These include bug reporting tools (abrt-desktop and abrt-gui) and a tool to measure battery life and performance (bltk).

Additional notes about these groups:

  • The "X Window System" package group is required when you are installing "Desktop", "General Purpose Desktop", or "KDE Desktop" package groups!

  • If you originally did a minimal or other non-desktop install, you can install GNOME (Desktop or General Purpose Desktop) or KDE (KDE Desktop) package groups along with "X Window System" to add a desktop to your system.

  • Some desktop applications, such as LibreOffice, are not included with server entitlements and requires that you install rhel-client* media and use desktop entitlements.

Root Cause

  • Need to know which software groups to install to get different types of RHEL desktop software installed.

Diagnostic Steps

  • To see the contents of any of the desktop-related package groups, type yum groupinfo groupname. For example:

    # **yum groupinfo "X Window System"**
Group: X Window System
 Description: X Window System Support.
 Mandatory Packages:
   xorg-x11-drivers
   xorg-x11-server-Xorg
...

  • To see information about a particular package from the group, use the yum info command. For example:

    # **yum info glx-utils**
...
Summary     : GLX utilities
URL         : http://www.mesa3d.org
License     : MIT
Description : The glx-utils package provides the glxinfo and glxgears utilities.
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