Last Thursday, April 21, Ubuntu and all its official flavors were officially launched. As you all know, the standard version of Ubuntu uses the Canonical Unity graphical environment. Although I cannot say that I dislike it too much, I can understand all those who prefer another graphical environment, something that, in fact, is also my case, my preference being Ubuntu MATE. Although the general graphical environment is called Unity, Ubuntu uses many applications with the GNOME user interface and in this article we will teach you how to install GNOME 3.20 on Ubuntu 16.04.
Ubuntu 16.04 uses GNOME 3.18 for the most part: GTK 3.18 alongside GNOME Shell 3.18, GM 3.18 and GNOME 3.18.x for most applications. Some of the exceptions are the Nautilus window manager that GNOME 3.14 uses and the Software Center and GNOME Calendar already using GNOME 3.20.x. If you want to update as much as possible to the latest version, you just have to keep reading.
Install GNOME 3.20 on Ubuntu 16.04
In order to install GNOME 3.20 you need to use the GNOME 3 repository. Keep in mind that this repository does not have everything up to date yet, but applications such as Cheese, Epiphany, Evince, Discos and some more are. Nautilus, Gedit, Maps, System Monitor, Terminal, GTK +, Control Center, GNOME Shell and GDM are all updated to version 3.20.
To install GNOME 3.20 you have to do the following:
- We open a terminal and write the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging sudo apt update sudo apt dist-upgrade
- Before confirming, you have to check that the packages you are going to remove there are none on which we depend.
- Although you can enter a new graphical environment by logging out and choosing the new one from the login screen, it is best to restart and then choose the new environment.
How to go back to GNOME 3.18
If we do not like what we see or there is something that is not executed correctly, always we can go back. To do this, we will open a terminal and write the following command:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
Keep in mind what we have said before: we can go back to GNOME 3.18, but Packages that we removed (if any) when installing GNOME 3.20 will not be reinstalled. Those packages will have to be reinstalled manually.
Have you managed to install the GNOME 3.20 graphical environment on Ubuntu? What do you think?