Tag: gnome

This mini how-to is to install Gnome on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Of course the best approach would have been to install Ubuntu Gnome in the first place. But if you didn’t (like me) and have Unity as desktop and would like Gnome (or just give it a try), check the rest of this article.

Note and disclaimer: Gnome3 will be available alongside Unity. So you can always switch back and forth between the two without troubles. However, a word of caution, as usual with system modifications, make sure you have backups available and working before proceeding. I make no guarantee that the following will work for you. I’m only stated it worked for me.

Installing Gnome Shell (aka Gnome3)

Installing the “core” Gnome 3 is rather easy. You need to have the Universe repository activated and then:

$ sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo apt install gnome-shell

During installation of gnome-shell, you will be prompted to choose between GDM (the default Gnome Display Manager) and LightDM (an alternative Ubuntu is using by default). The main functions of these DM, from an end user perspective, is that they provide a graphical login where you can choose the user (and type a password) and choose the desktop environment to use once logged in. In addition these DM can offer things such as autologin. There is no wrong answer here. You can stick with LightDM (it is the one installed by default on UBuntu, and that’s the option I chose) or switch to GDM. In both cases, you need to choose for the session if you wish to use Gnome or Unity desktop environment.

Now you can log out and log in again (choosing Gnome for the session).

Installing some missing default Gnome Apps

This is entirely optional. If you have seen Gnome3 release notes, you will be looking for a few extra applications that are not installed by default by Ubuntu and that are available in the Universe repository. Example applications: Gnome Maps, Gnome Weather, etc.

To install them, you can either install the gnome-core package which will install a minimal Gnome applications environment to start with. Or install a complete Gnome applications environment (which includes all of gnome-core) by installing the package gnome. Or finally simply install a few goodies (a subselection of gnome) that is tailored to your needs. Here is a list of goodies that I installed (from Universe Repos):

$ sudo apt install eog-plugins gnome-{backgrounds,boxes,clocks,color-manager} \
  gnome-{dictionary,documents,maps,packagekit,shell-extension-weather} \
  gnome-{system-tools,weather,music,photos} gnote

And a few others from the main repos:

$ sudo apt install gnome-user-share indicator-printers

And with this, you can get a nice Gnome environment with a Ubuntu based OS.

For Ubuntu 14.10 Users

The above instructions works also for Ubuntu 14.10 users.