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Some people (me) would prefer the straight GNOME experience as opposed to the Unity style desktop offered in Ubuntu 17.10.

How can I get the standard GNOME desktop and interface?

muru
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Charles Green
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2 Answers2

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There are two methods to easily gain a more GNOME like experience in Ubuntu 17.10.

The first method is to run the program

sudo apt install gnome-session

This will undo many of the features that have been added to GNOME, such as the always-on dock, but will leave the Ubuntu color scheme.

The second method is to execute the command

sudo apt install vanilla-gnome-desktop

This will install the GNOME themes as expected from prior versions of Ubuntu GNOME, change the Plymouth splash screens, and install several common GNOME utilities.

muru
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Charles Green
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  • Nice! But don't we have to remove anything? – pomsky Oct 13 '17 at 12:43
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    @pomsky Not that I noticed - I had previously removed gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock, but that (and quite a bit of other stuff) is removed or disabled by the vanilla-gnome-desktop package – Charles Green Oct 13 '17 at 12:48
  • I have not tried it but as far as I know the default ubuntu desktop is nothing more than a theme and an extension. – Panther Oct 13 '17 at 14:57
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    @bodhi.zazen I would have thought so too, except for the 100+ additional packages installed by vanilla-gnome-desktop – Charles Green Oct 13 '17 at 15:01
  • @CharlesGreen I've upgraded from Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. There was a separate GNOME session (+ GNOME on Xorg) offered at the login screen along with the default Ubuntu session (+ Ubuntu on Xorg) one gets after a fresh installation. This GNOME session is identical to my 17.04 setup, Ubuntu Dock and appindicators were disabled by default, Adwaita theme was available (removed in fresh 17.10) etc. – pomsky Oct 20 '17 at 01:36
  • @pomsky That's great! I did not do an upgrade, but a fresh install. My own experience with the upgrades is that after three or four.... – Charles Green Oct 20 '17 at 01:46
  • And if you want to get rid of the Ubuntu shenanigans in the DE selector use sudo apt purge ubuntu-session. – Videonauth Oct 20 '17 at 12:54
  • So what is the difference then between this and install gnome-session? –  Oct 21 '17 at 13:47
  • @ParanoidPanda A huge pile of dependancies vanilla-gnome-desktop installs quite a few utilities related to gnome. I have not tested just using gnome-session yet, having messed up my system to the point of reinstallation yesterday. – Charles Green Oct 21 '17 at 13:51
  • @ParanoidPanda Tested both - vanilla-gnome-session loads pretty much the entire Ubuntu-gnome experience, from the initial plymouth screen onwards. gnome-session undoes some (most?) of the Unity-like features of 17.10 and replaces with Gnome behaviour, but keeps the Unity-like themes. – Charles Green Oct 21 '17 at 22:56
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    @CharlesGreen: Maybe it would be good then and important for your answer to contain that distinction given that both packages do exist and various guides point to either one of them. –  Oct 22 '17 at 12:51
  • @CharlesGreen gnome-session installs none of the usual tools like libreoffice and some of the extensions and a lot of the X stack. tested it as i went bare metal. All in all 171 packages less are installed by gnome-session, worth about 400 MB. – Videonauth Oct 22 '17 at 13:31
  • @Videonauth I think you are correct - as a dependency, vanilla-gnome-desktop includes gnome-session, but the other items such as libre-office are only included as recommends – Charles Green Oct 22 '17 at 13:53
  • @CharlesGreen how will installing "vanilla" differ from the old Ubuntu-Gnome? any missing or added programs/features. Alternately what features are missing/added over Ubuntu-Gnome when just installing gnome-session. i.e. are either identical to the ubuntu-gnome or if not which is the closest – TrailRider Jan 06 '18 at 23:46
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    @TrailRider Although not an expert... 'vanilla-gnome' will be what you used to have from Ubuntu-Gnome. Gnome-session is just the gnome screen layout, less of the unity like look, and none of the gnome applications that you got with Ubuntu-gnome. – Charles Green Jan 07 '18 at 00:28
  • @CharlesGreen thank you that was what i had gathered but wanted to clarify. I was not sure if vanilla pulled in more other programs and dependencies than ubuntu-gnome had – TrailRider Jan 07 '18 at 01:11
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If you want full GNOME, you can install it by using:

sudo apt install gnome

This package installs around 293 packages/utilities and on the other hand vanilla-gnome-desktop package installs around 170 packages/utilities which in my opinion aren't required just to experience Vanilla GNOME. You can install a 'minimal' version of vanilla GNOME which need only 4 new packages using:

sudo apt install ubuntu-gnome-desktop

It doesn't include additional packages (which many of times are useless) and GNOME plymouth but you can experience vanilla GNOME without using much space.

Kulfy
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  • I'll try this on a VM - my personal preference was the Ubuntu-gnome flavor (I've only used Ubuntu since 12.04) and got to prefer that desktop. I think that the ubuntu-gnome-desktop feels more like Unity, which had originally caused me problems with one of my laptops. – Charles Green Jan 29 '19 at 02:41
  • @CharlesGreen I'm using ubuntu-gnome-desktop since Ubuntu 16.04. And currently I'm on 18.04 and using the same. I've experienced no particular difference as far performance and appearance are considered. I can't comment on apps since I've considered only DE. And I'll strongly suggest to stick to at least some default apps. Moreover ubuntu-desktop in 18.04+ is Unity like GNOME. – Kulfy Jan 29 '19 at 05:03