Gnome – Differences Between Gnome3 and Gnome-Shell
gnome-shellgnome3
What is the difference between gnome3 and gnome-shell, if any?
Best Answer
GNOME Shell is just one part of GNOME 3. Together with Mutter (the window manager), it is its primary user interface. The secondary interface (for hardware that can't handle the 3D workload, or for people who don't care about glitz), is Gnome Panel + Metacity (old window manager), which will basically give you the look of current GNOME 2.
GNOME 3 is a whole desktop suite that includes a whole bunch of stuff like a GUI toolkit, development suites, a file manager, some utilities, some system-level daemons, and a whole bunch of apps.
KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) is enabled by default in kernels after 2.6.33 (you should be on Kernel 3.0 if you are running an up-to-date Arch). So you should remove nomodeset from your kernel line (the option in grub.cfg). This will prevent the Clutter error.
In order to start X successfully, make sure you have added radeon to your MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf ( you will need to rebuild your initramfs image if you have to add it).
There is more detail, including troubleshooting options on the Arch Wiki ATI page.
For newer cards like yours, you might want to use the catalyst driver.
Best Answer
GNOME Shell is just one part of GNOME 3. Together with Mutter (the window manager), it is its primary user interface. The secondary interface (for hardware that can't handle the 3D workload, or for people who don't care about glitz), is Gnome Panel + Metacity (old window manager), which will basically give you the look of current GNOME 2.
GNOME 3 is a whole desktop suite that includes a whole bunch of stuff like a GUI toolkit, development suites, a file manager, some utilities, some system-level daemons, and a whole bunch of apps.