For many users, installing a Fedora Server may necessitate the use of Gnome utilities such as reliable RDP, which is currently not working with Wayland and KDE.
This represents a few issues:
First, when installing Fedora server, there is no option to install Gnome. Literally every other WM and DE are available, but NOT Gnome- arguably Fedora’s most mature and integrated DE.
Second, there seems to be conflicting, missing and woefully inadequate official documentation on this.
According to Fedora Docs, dnf environment list --available | grep desktop should list all DEs, and indeed, it does EXCEPT for Gnome!
Some sites and users recommend dnf group list --hidden
But why is Gnome hidden?! I see this specific question is asked many times by many users, all without satisfactory resolution.
Google searches lead to forum posts and blogs with outdated and/or conflicting information on this, and I hope there is some official documentation to make me feel stupid for missing it- but I can’t find it.
Thank you; I found this solution through a convoluted rabbit hole. I am more than willing to do my homework and find solutions, it’s just that this has been an issue for many years now- and it is mostly a documentation issue IMO.
It might sound like I am embittered, but I am really not.
I am truly curious as to why this is just an accepted quirk or idiosyncrasy.
If after, following the Fedora documentation and doing
dnf environment list --available | grep desktop
and getting output which lists every available desktop environment except for Gnome, it’s easy to wonder how or why this continues to be the case.
It’s kind of a stretch to interpret workstation-product-environment as Gnome. I built a headless server, and wanted to throw Gnome on top of it for ease of use for family members.. I did not want a ‘workstation-product-environment’ per se.
It’s also easy for me to see how frustrating this would be for a newcomer, especially after they have RTFM; the official manual, no less.
I am a big believer in the ‘everything’ image too.
It’s just that if someone is setting up a server and finds themselves in need of the Gnome environment unexpectedly, I believe there should be an intuitive way of grabbing it by simply reading the output, especially AFTER reading the (official) documentation.
Yes, I make good use of ssh and cockpit.
However, in this particular edge case, I simply needed an RDP solution for ease of use for family members and KDE just does not work reliably.
As already said too, our edition with gnome is the Workstation. It is pre-configured that everything work and you have a smooth experience.
I do play around with the everything ISO and this hidden GNOME group. It is not personalized for Fedora (backgrounds / logo etc.) is missing. With the hidden group it is possible to create a “raw” gnome to configure as needed. Avoiding that dependencies get messed up.
gnome-desktop is just one of the groups contained in workstation-product-environment. You can run dnf environment info workstation-product-environment to see what the other groups are.
Why it is not called “Gnome Workstation” that is what someone or a committee at Fedora decided not to call it.
