Red Hat

Web installer

You should be able to install ROX using the ROX-All package (could someone confirm that this works?).

Red Hat 9 users note

According to httpdistrowatch, Red Hat 9 only has GTK 2.2. When you try to run ROX-Filer the first time
it will ask you which version to download. Double-click on the version field and make ROX-Filer 2.2.0 your preferred version, as this was the last version to
support GTK 2.2.

RHEL 4 and later

RHEL 4 and later support GTK 2.4, which allows you to run more recent versions of the filer.

Download

Old RPMs

Warning: These packages are really out-of-date. I guess everyone's using Fedora Core instead.

Download either the source or the binary RPM (i386 for normal PCs):

AND download the shared MIME package RPM from httpthis page.

Note: These RPMs are rather out-of-date. 2.2.x is the current stable series. Packagers wanted! If you want a recent version you'll need to install from source.

(Attention Fedora Core 1 users: The RPMs that seem to work include the file, httprox-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm, and the Red Hat 9 RPM for the httpshared MIME package.)

Then use the RPM installer (should be available by clicking on the downloaded RPMs) to install them both beginning with the MIME info RPM. You can then run the filer by typing 'rox' at a shell prompt. The RPM also creates a launcher for you in the GNOME/KDE Menu under Accessories/Other Accessories. You can start the filer from this launcher and also add it to the GNOME panel or KDE Kicker for easy access.
If you can't find the graphical installer, get a terminal window and do the following ($ is the prompt):

$ su
[ enter root password ]
$ rpm -ihv rox*.rpm shared-mime-info*.rpm
$ exit
$ rox

That should install ROX-Filer and shared MIME info, and open a window onto your home directory.
Doing this only gets you the filer, not the whole desktop. You might like to just stick with that for a while (at least you'll still have the old interface too, if you find something difficult with ROX).
If you want the whole desktop:

  1. Download the other core programs from this site (ROX-Session, Wrappers, ROX-Lib2, Edit, Archive, System, any panel applets you want, etc). Don't worry -- these are all very small. For System and ROX-Session, get the Linux ix86 binaries. The others are python programs and should work for all platforms.
  2. Extract them. GNOME has the File-Roller tool for extracting archives; or, use the command line (xzf = eXtract gZipped File):

$ tar xzf wrappers.tgz
$ tar xzf archive-1.9.2.tgz
etc

You should be able to run the extracted applications from ROX-Filer. Use the filer to move the applications whereever you want them. Move ROX-Lib2 to /usr/local/lib/ROX-Lib2 so the other applications can find it (they'll let you know if they can't).
To make ROX the default desktop on login, run ROX-Session from the filer. This makes the "default" session listed in GDM start the ROX desktop. Choosing to set another WM as default will prevent you from logging into ROX. This can be remedied by setting ROX as a unique login Session in GDM.
To set ROX as a unique Session in GDM do the following as root:
$ cp ~/.xsession /etc/Xll/gdm/Session/ROX

This will create a Session in the GDM login manager for ROX, allowing you to easily switch between ROX and GNOME, KDE, XFCE4, etc.
After installing, you might like to read the Getting Started Guide.