Time for action – installing GNOME and SDK in Debian Testing

Debian Testing (also called Wheezy) uses GNOME 3 as its default desktop, so our focus now is to get the SDK installed. Same as Fedora, Debian Testing uses the Add/Remove Software tool to do the package management. So let's get started by running the tool:

Click on the Activities button on the upper-left corner of the screen.
Click on the Applications button.
Click on the Add/Remove Software button.
The following tool shows up:

What just happened?

The Add/Remove Software tool is a mark-and-install package management tool. It means that before doing any real installation, we are given a chance to select the packages we want to install. The installation is postponed until the time we provide confirmation by pressing the Apply button. With this installation style, we can keep browsing the packages without getting bothered by the installation process.

As you can see in the previous screenshot, the tool has two main columns. The left-hand side column shows the search box and the package categories. The right-hand side column shows the search results (or the category contents), and below it there is a box showing the package description.

Marking SDK packages

The SDK packages come in many development packages. The development packages contain the header and all the supporting files required during compilation and linking. It is not necessary for them to be installed when we just need to run the applications linked to a library.

These packages are named with the lib prefix and the -dev postfix. They have internal dependencies to the actual library needed by the applications; so whenever we install a development package, the package containing the actual library goes with it automatically.

Here is a map of the Debian packages and GNOME components described in the architecture section. Let's type the names of the packages into the search box and mark them for installation.

Subsystem	Package names
Core libraries	`libglib2.0-dev 9` (GIO and GObject are already inside this package) `libglib2.0-doc`
User interface libraries	`libgtk-3-dev` `libgtk-3-doc` `libcairo2-dev` `libcairo2-doc` `libpango1.0-dev` `libpango1.0-doc` `libatk1.0-dev` `libatk1.0-doc` `libclutter-1.0-dev` `libclutter-1.0-doc` `libwebkitgtk-3.0-dev` `libwebkitgtk-3.0-doc`
Multimedia libraries	`libgstreamer0.10-dev`
Data storage	`libecal1.2-dev`
Tools and basic development packages	`valac-0.16` `anjuta` `glade` `gtranslator` `devhelp`

Applying the installation

After marking the packages, let's now hit the Apply button to start the installation. Let's sit back and relax. Wait a while until all the packages are installed. After that, we are clear to go to the next chapter.