Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

Unity. I hate you.

That is all I can say. I don't like it. Don't bother trying to convince me that I'm "wrong" - I've heard it all.

I've been running the "classic" Ubuntu desktop in 11.04

But, Gnome 2.x is dead. So the "classic" Gnome shell will be dead in the next rev of Ubuntu.

My solution is to go to Gnome 3. It is a big change to be sure, and actually the design is in some ways similar to Unity. But I still vastly prefer it to Unity.

So, how do you get Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 11.04? First you gots to recognize that you are going to be in for a big ol' pain in the butt change here. Second, don't do this unless you are sure you want to do this, you know?

Then, open a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

reboot, and when logging in choose the user you want, then select "GNOME" From the dropdown menu. Enter your password, and you should be in Gnome 3 land.

after you get logged in, you may have some theme weirdness, like windows having an ugly orange title bar. Not a problem, get out your terminal:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-accessibility-themes

sudo apt-get install gnome-themes-standard

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Reboot, and you should be good to go. If not, go ahead and launch the gnome-tweak-tool.

Under "Interface", Gtk+ Theme, choose Adwaita.
Under "Windows", Current theme, choose Adwaita.
(Adwaita is the default theme for Gnome 3)

You will probably need to reboot again to get the settings to stick.

Thanks to Ubuntu Geek for making this so clear.