How to Install GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.04

Posted on Wednesday, 13 April 2011 by Praveen

11 Comments BOOKMARK

In this tutorial I will teach you how to install the GNOME 3 desktop environment on the Ubuntu 11.04 operating system.GNOME 3 comes after five years of hard work.It brings totally redesigned user interface, a lot of hot new features, improved applications, new translations and updated documentation.

What is Gnome 3 ?

GNOME 3 is the next evolution of the GNOME desktop environment, and it has been released on April 6th, 2011, on mirrors worldwide. GNOME 3 is a light desktop environment used in many popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, etc.

Previously I have written a tutorial on How to Install KDE SC 4.5 in Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”

Key Features of ”Gnome 3″

Extremely elegant and easy-to-use desktop
Side-by-side window tiling, in order to handle multiple windows easy and simple
A revamped file manager
You can easily organize windows with totally revamped workspaces
Smoother and faster desktop experience.
A pleasant experience for every user.

Note:
The download file size is large. So, it may take long time ti install.

Step-by-step Tutorial to Install Gnome 3

Step1:
Press ALT+F2 key on your keyboard, check the “Run in terminal” option and paste the following command in the “Run Application” dialog,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

A terminal window will open enter your password when asked.

The terminal window will appear for a few seconds, and it will automatically close.

Step2:
Press ALT+F2 key combination again, check the “Run in terminal” option and paste the following command in the “Run Application” dialog,
gksu apt-get update

As previous step enter your password when asked. A terminal window will appear for a few seconds, and it will automatically close.

Step3:
Press the ALT+F2 key combination again, check the “Run in terminal” option and paste the following command in the “Run Application” dialog,
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

A terminal window will appear. Enter your password and hit Enter. When you will be asked if you want to upgrade your packages, type Y and hit Enter. The terminal window will automatically close when the installation is over.

Step4:
That’s it GNOME 3 is installed on your Ubuntu machine. Just reboot your system and choose Ubuntu GNOME Shell Desktop at the login screen.

Enjoy your new GNOME 3 desktop environment The upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Linux distribution comes with GNOME 3 desktop environment.

Ubuntu lovers checkout,
10 Most Wanted Ubuntu 10.04 Articles | Latest Linux Hacks – Geekyard

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Praveen has written 960 articles.

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11 Responses to “How to Install GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.04”

m4study | April 13th, 2011 at 1:58 pm

is it working for ubuntu 10.1
I already followed your steps, but it is not work for me.

Praveen | April 13th, 2011 at 3:21 pm

For Ubuntu 10.10, there’s only Gnome 3 stack for testing and builds on launchpad.net and it’s NOT RECOMMENDED to update.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:Ubuntu-desktop/gnome3-builds
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

So, Update your Ubuntu 10.01 to Ubuntu 10.04 then try these steps.

Gary | April 14th, 2011 at 12:44 am

I tried the above 3 times but no success. Saw message about all index files did not load, not found so ignored or older files used. On re-booting, the Gnome 3 option was not there.

Thanks,

Praveen | April 14th, 2011 at 7:25 am

What Ubuntu version you are using?

Gary | April 15th, 2011 at 4:23 am

Ubuntu 10.04

guest | April 15th, 2011 at 5:43 pm

When I execute sudo apt-get update I have the error

W: Impossibile recuperare http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu/dists/lucid/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found

It seems they don’t have a lucid repository… How did it work for you? Maybe you are using maverick, type cat /etc/lsb-release in a terminal, what do you get?

vin | April 17th, 2011 at 8:29 am

The upgrade is only available on maverick and natty

Check this:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu/dists/

Upgrade manager will fail to load:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu/dists/lucid/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz

Praveen | April 18th, 2011 at 6:46 am

Yeah you are right am using Natty realise only.I changed the post title to 11.04.

Dr. Robert Lundien | August 8th, 2011 at 12:10 am

I’ve tried the commands you reference several times, always SAME error! error follows:
“Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Package gnome-shell is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source”

I’ve found the same commands to install, posted by several other people, must work for some. Any ideas? I’m using 11.04 64 bit, desktop. HP z800 Workstation (Dual Xeon “2 x X5690″, 18 GB Kingston ECC DDR3 1333 Reg. All SCSI drives.(sas)

Praveen | August 10th, 2011 at 8:42 pm

I have no idea why you get these errors. I followed the same procedure I worked fine

Michael | March 24th, 2012 at 12:51 pm