To try out, work with or simply use wyoDesktop, first a fitting kernel with framebuffer support, DirectFB etc. has to be installed and set up. If you want to get involved in doing some serious work see below for a possible test installation.
The CheckDFB application will perform some tests to give an overview if your system is correctly setup. A list of possible problems and there solutions is here.
Requirements:
For several distributions there exist DirectFB packages (libdirectfb). At least version 0.9.20 (Debian/Sarge) should be used. Simply install such package and all dependences. To build anything of wyoDesktop you also need the development packages (libdirecftb-dev).
If no package exists a manual installation has to be done. First get the source tar file from DirectFB and extract it into a local directory (i.e. "/usr/src"). Follow closely the instructions from the "Readme".
Dependent packages:
The multi application core requires the Linux kernel fusion module. Currently neither the Linux kernel nor any distribution contains this module. Therefore you have to get one of the binary modules fusionmodule_2.4.22.bz2, fusionmodule_2.4.24.bz2 or fusionmodule_2.6.3.bz2 and build it according the instructions.
If you need more information about DirectFB installation, have a look at the tutorial from Yuri Bongiorno.
Currently there is no GDK package built for DirectFB, therefore it has to be done manually.
Get the GDK tarball from DirectFB and extract it into a local directory. ???
wxGDK isn't ready so far, sorry. Either help to make it real or come back later.
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The best is if you have a spare partition on you harddisk or VmWare to install a new separate test environment, wyoDesktop currently might or might not work together with any other usual desktop installation.
Get the current Debian/Sarge CD (testing) and install a base system. I always add the following packages: fbset and modprob. With modprob load the appropriate framebuffer driver (use lspci). From here just do all the steps from the normal base setup.
If you want to do some serious work for wyoDesktop be carefully that you don't (never) install any GTK+ and X packages. Otherwise your test results most probably won't be accurate.