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Is there a way to install Gnome on trusty tahr?

Ritik
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  • Thats it? No adding repositories? – Ritik May 19 '14 at 12:17
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    The default repositories will give you Gnome 3.10. The ppa:ricotz/testing mentioned below will give you Gnome 3.12. There are significant differences. – Jos May 19 '14 at 12:24
  • I am also getting E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. – Ritik May 19 '14 at 12:34

2 Answers2

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I imagine that the OP meant he want have the Gnome Desktop environment on his or her Ubuntu 14.04.

There are two possible answers here:

  1. Use the version distributed by Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, which is the Gnome 3.10 version. This is recommended as it does not need to add PPAs.

    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop
    

    which should work out of the box. This will install the gnome-shell and a series of default applications for the Gnome Desktop experience. You can install just gnome-shell if you want, but be warned that this would be an untested (and unsupported) configuration - the desktop configuration is made assuming the presence of the default apps(1).

    This will install a package called gdm too, which is the "Display Manager" (the program that shows you the login screen --- and that will setup the basic graphic environment), and will ask you if you want to use gdm or lightdm (the original Display Manager of Unity). In principle you can choose one of them; in practice sometimes the Gnome Desktop misbehaves if you do not use gdm.

  2. Use the new Gnome 3.12, with the PPA. These are experimental packages, you can break your system, and you are supposed to do that only if you are confident you can manage the breakage (as clearly stated in https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/gnome3-staging)

=== *WARNING* ===
The packages here have been deemed not ready for general use, 
they have known bugs and/or regressions, sometimes of a critical nature.
Mostly things should run smoothly but be prepared to use ppa-purge,
when you encounter issues!

If they break your system, you get to keep both halves.


Footnotes:

(1) consider that this is normally not a problem. Linux application for one desktop will generally run on all the others --- I have Ubuntu Gnome with Thunar File Manager (from Xubuntu) and digiKam (from Kubuntu) photo manipulation program, and the only problem is that the "graphical appearance" could be a bit inconsistent... which I really don't care.

Rmano
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  • I just wanted to have GNOME DE not Ubuntu Gnome Desktop. – Ritik May 19 '14 at 16:05
  • And if i add Ubuntu Gnome Desktop, will I end with two set of apps? – Ritik May 19 '14 at 16:12
  • And tring to install Gnome desktop from the above method gives the following error: E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. – Ritik May 19 '14 at 16:14
  • You will have the union of the two sets of applications (some are the same). About the error: you have to solve that first --- otherwise nothing will work. Search google for "site:askubuntu.com you have held broken packages". Probably you'll need to purge the PPAs, if you have set them. Sometime to get rid of a broken PPA you need to disable the PPA(s), fix with apt-get install -f, re-enable the PPA(s), and then purge. (This is the meaning of "you get to keep both halves" over there...) – Rmano May 19 '14 at 16:33
  • I tried apt-get install -f. Not working. – Ritik May 19 '14 at 17:12
  • What do "not working" means? The PC switched off? Exploded? Please: this is another question, not related to installing gnome. So: 1. Read the links google gives you; 2. try the solutions; 3. if still do not work, add a question stated exactly what you tried and what is the result (what the terminal says when you say it's "failing"). Requires a lot of work on your side, I know, but this is the idea behind SE... – Rmano May 19 '14 at 18:20
  • Not working means not installing out not showing up. I saw a lot of links on google but gnome is not working. Gnome classic, cinnamon, and xfce have been installed by me and they are working – Ritik May 19 '14 at 18:49
  • I give up, sorry. Without further information (point 2 and 3 in my comment above) I would need psychic power to understand what's going on. I hope some user more skilled than me can help you! – Rmano May 19 '14 at 19:09
  • If it involves making a new question, can you help me here? – Ritik May 19 '14 at 19:16
  • This is a volunteer board, where the people asking question are supposed to do their part. If the question is well written, detailed, and complete (see my points 1,2,3 above) someone (maybe including myself, if I can) will surely will be able to help you. – Rmano May 19 '14 at 19:18
  • Just a suggestion, can some one join askers on apps like chrome remote desktop? – Ritik May 19 '14 at 19:22
  • That's up to each one of the people here. Remember, no one is paid for writing here. The idea behind this forum is to let trace of useful answers to help others in the future, so one-to-one solutions like that are, IMHO, not in topic. It is more the kind of thing a paid support service can do. – Rmano May 19 '14 at 19:25
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Open terminal by Ctrl+Alt+Tand run following command:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) universe"    
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell ubuntu-gnome-desktop
Pandya
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