First of all, a hearty congratulations to everyone involved in the GNOME project for having released GNOME3, a really awesome desktop environment. My previous post about GNOME3 was about my partial experience with it, and as pointed out by comments on that post, I had made a false image of GNOME3 from a partial as experience as that. So I installed Fedora 15 on a spare partition, and I must say that it was a rockin’ experience. Thanks to Unity, I am used to Alt+Tabbing, etc, so I was getting around with Shell just as well.
Now back in the Ubuntu world. The Ubuntu GNOME3 PPA has been in active development since the beginning of this cycle, and thanks to the work by the Ubuntu GNOME3 team, the PPA now provides a 97% GNOME3 experience. On my Natty install I added the PPA again, upgraded all packages, installed some others (which others? I’ll point that out later on) and then rebooted.
Software Center and Ayatana Scrollbars on Ubuntu with GNOME3
In its current state the PPA is far from perfect, as it is known to break Unity as well as it can also break your entire system at times. So I STRONGLY discourage you from trying it out on a production system. Here are a few tips for those using (or planning to use) the PPA:
1) Make sure to *upgrade* *all* *packages*. Partial upgrades of packages often leads to some problems like a borked wallpaper, desktop icons when they shouldn’t be, bad theming, etc.
2) Ensure these packages are installed: gnome-icon-theme gnome-icon-theme-symbolic gnome-themes-standard (NOT gnome-themes, remove gnome-themes if its installed).
3) Once you’ve upgraded all packages, make sure to *remove* gnome-accessibility-themes as it conflicts with gnome-themes-standard and if you have both installed, GDM won’t theme well.
4) For proper configuration, install gnome-tweak-tool (also in the PPA).
Known issues with the PPA (After 4 days of heavy usage I found only 2, err, 3 of them):
1) gnome-system-log shows logs empty.
2) Network Manager Applet at the top right of the desktop pops up a menu unlike other icons which pop up fancy menus with animations.
3) Unlike in Fedora, you’ll have to use apt-get to install stuff in Ubuntu 
In all the other fields I found the PPA to be matching the experience of Fedora 100%. From GDM to Shutdown, everything else was flawless (atleast in my case). Unlike my previous experience, keyboard shortcuts, animations, just everything was working as it should.
GNOME3 on Ubuntu (yes, on Ubuntu!)
Now, for the most important part of the post. Why did I write this up? No, not because I wanted to tell everyone about the PPA, but to tell everyone that regardless of Unity being default in Ubuntu 11.04, users will still have a choice to install their favourite DE as they wish (GNOME with Shell, KDE, XFCE, LXDE). Just a small DE change doesn’t always mean changing distros for an end-user. FOSS is all about choice. Use what you like, on top of what you like.
Also most people who had tried out the PPA in the last week didn’t upgrade all packages, and arrived at stupid conclusions saying: “The PPA breaks my system, GDM doesn’t even open up, it crashes with an error” . On further investigation I found out that that guy was using the 2.32 version of GDM with the new gnome-session, not a healthy combination even though GDM 3.0 is in the PPA. On asking why he didn’t update all packages, he replied that he was too eager to get to GNOME Shell and just updated a select of packages. And instead of blaming himself, that guy was blaming the PPA folks. *ahem*
Let us take up another such scenario. Take a look at this comment on Rodrigo’s blog. Let us consider each point one by one:
it is not possible to a) login without many errors b) change your theme which suddenly is broken c) access many options in systems settings which were previously available before instalation… and so on.
That user had tried out the PPA a few days ago, before GDM 3 got uploaded. And even before GDM3 got it, it was possible to log in to the GNOME-Shell session, the only problem was that GDM came up with a really bad theme and no wallpaper. All that’s fixed now, and GDM is now pleasant to use, with its new theme, new design and new background wallpaper (the same blue wallpaper which is the GNOME3 default as well).
Now for point b. His theme is broken because he didn’t install gnome-themes-standard (I also had this problem earlier). Now gnome-shell depends on gnome-themes-standard, and so all that’s fixed now. For changing themes, you can use gnome-tweak-tool.
Point C now. That difference in system settings is actually a GNOME3 feature. The GNOME3 team have simplified many options and have made them available in the new gnome-control-center, also in the PPA. The new control-center is awesome, by no way I could believe that its just a new version of the same old gnome-control-center. Gnome-tweak-tool is used to change themes, etc.
If you encounter any problems with the PPA, feel free to contact the GNOME3 team at this address: gnome3-team@lists.launchpad.net . You can also file bugs on the respective Ubuntu packages and tag them with gnome3 and subscribe the gnome3-team to the bug. We’ll be happy to help. Enjoy GNOME3 on Ubuntu!
(BTW, ever since I installed GNOME3 on Ubuntu, I didn’t boot up Fedora )
thanks for the insights on the status of the ppa. it’s great that you guys are working on making gnome3 flawlessly accessible on ubuntu. i’m really thankful for this.
i tested the shell on live-environments for a few times, and it corresponded perfectly with my workflow. almost didn’t want to boot in my good old maverick-install. it’s so cool that i will soon be able to use gnome 3 without switching the distribution (for which i wouldn’t have time anyway).
is there any timetable on when the ppa will reach a stable status and is save to use on a production system?
Not very much sure about when we’ll achieve that, but should happen by the end of this month. We’ll also have to conduct tests on systems and check if they break. So I’m confident of stability by the end of this month.
But do keep in mind that, even after becoming stable, the PPA will continue to break Unity (though you’d get a complete GNOME3 experience). That’s something which cannot be achieved before Ubuntu 11.10.
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the first screenshot is missing
Thanks for informing, fixed now.
I am specifically advising people NOT to update their system with every package in the gnome3 PPA. Upgrading to the latest gnome-session will prevent you from logging into Ubuntu (Unity), Unity 2D, or even Gnome Classic. And it’s a pain to revert to the previous version.
I can’t imagine that it would be too difficult to fix the packaging error in gnome-session but I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what’s going on in the transition from gnome-session to gnome-session 3 for me to fix it myself.
Hi Jeremy,
No, its not a packaging issue, its just that the APIs of gnome-session 2.32 and gnome-session 3 are incompatible. Unity and Gnome-Panel in Natty are made to interact with gnome-session 2.32. Gnome-shell has been made to interact with g-s 3. So you can’t use both side-by-side, installing one will break the other, but you still can choose one of them (for good).
But Gnome Shell works just fine with natty’s gnome-session 2.32! And I’d say that most users interested in gnome-shell would be pretty upset if after installing it they wouldn’t be able to login to Unity or the Ubuntu Classic interfaces. It’s a big deal and needs to be mentioned when you’re announcing the PPA. It’s not that hard to avoid upgrading gnome-session.
You should know users ignore the “don’t use on production machines” warning. We’re both users who have been using Natty on machines we’d prefer not to have broken and there are thousands of other people using Natty on their home computers too.
I’ve mentioned it already:
Oh, and I meant gnome-settings-daemon as well. Once gnome-settings-daemon is upgraded, Unity and GNOME2 are unable to retrieve their settings from it, hence opening up with either an error or a very bad theme.
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Followed this point by point, and its working pretty slick, but gnome-settings-daemon crashes with a core dump. The tweak tool reports that “user theme extensions are not installed”. So it works, but looks butt-ugly.
I’ve triple checked and I’m thinking that the user extension isn’t about?
What is the problem you’re facing? What is butt-ugly? The entire interface? If that’s so, then try running this command:
sudo apt-get install –reinstall gnome-settings-daemon.
As for the user themes extension, that’s for changing the theme of GNOME-Shell (Note that the GNOME Shell theme is different from GTK themes). You can install the user-themes extension by building the gnome-shell-extensions package from source. The gnome-shell-extensions package isn’t in the PPA yet.
I am using Gnome shell without that extension and its running perfectly, so unless you want to theme your shell, you probably won’t need to install the extension.
I have the same issue, with the default ugly GTK+ theme, but your fix doesn’t seem to work. Any other ideas?
Also, the new workspace switcher doesn’t really work in dual-screen mode. The second screen always displays the same content regardless of which workspace I am in with the left screen.
why you don’t work with debian gnome 3 team ? i think it’s better to work with debian team, gnome 3 ppa other problem the fallback mode not working .
http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-gnome-3.0-status.html
We sure are working with the Debian GNOME3 team. Infact most of the packages in the PPA are a direct copy from Debian Experimental.
The PPA is to ease Ubuntu Natty users and testers from trying out and using GNOME3. For such people manually downloading packages from Debian Experimental would be a nightmare as many of them would require changes to work on Ubuntu.
thanks for the hints. You helped me to fix the issue with gnome-themes
Hello Bilal,
Do you have any idea as to when the gnome-shell-extensions package might make it into the PPA?
Thanks
Here is a extension for pidgin users for getting new chat notifications work with pidgin http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2011/04/pidgin-and-gnome3.html
Any ideas when evolution will hit the PPA? That’s the only thing missing for me..
it appears gnome-shell requires networkmanager >= 0.9 in order to display the monochrome indicator
Great post…this really helps with some of the issues I encountered, by diving in head-first, as I always do. (But I was able to figure most of them out!)
Speaking of the new Gnome Control Center…it does look nice, but also pretty empty. A lot of configuration tools now seem either missing or at least harder to find/access. I hope this will improve with time, and that this isn’t an example of Gnome’s “users are confused and frightened by options and so must be protected from them” philosophy.
Any idea when we’ll be able to install Gnome3 without breaking Unity?
I’ve been pretty pleased with my experiences so far of Natty and Gnome3. I think Unity is pretty good, but overall, I like Gnome3 better. But I’d like to be able to use it and still have the option to switch back without reinstalling Ubuntu. But maybe I’ll give it another go…with the advice from this article, it’ll probably go more smoothly this time…
Oh, right, just saw the answer to my own question:
“Bilal Akhtar says:
Another 6 months? Oh well. Unity’s nice, but I think I’ll get by just fine without it.
“But do keep in mind that, even after becoming stable, the PPA will continue to break Unity (though you’d get a complete GNOME3 experience). That’s something which cannot be achieved before Ubuntu 11.10.”
Thanks for this well-written article. I had already managed to accomplish most of your items to run gnome-shell on Ubuntu Natty, but you mentioned a couple of more items for me to check.
My main problem is that gnome-settings-daemon is using 100% of my CPU (both threads of a Pentium4 3.4gHz CPU) and, so far, I have not come across a similar problem in my web search. The system runs just fine with Unity. Any tips?
Tim
Oops, never mind. After rebooting the system, CPU usage returned to normal.
Sorry,
Tim
Does anyone know whether Gnome3 also works with all the precautions above taken into account in Virtual Box? A couple of days ago I installed the current Natty beta in VBox and thought “well why not install Gnome Shell”. I just did the whole dist-upgrade thing without excluding certain packages (like advised in tutorials on installing Gnome Shell in Natty you find on the web aplenty (makes me wonder if they didn’t just all copy each other)) and out came a mess. That is, windows wouldn’t be drawn correctly, so you couldn’t work with it at all. Since I’m still sceptical about Unity I wanted to try both DEs before ditching “Classic” Gnome for good in Ubuntu 11.10.
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How did you get network-manager working? They’re still using 0.8.3. It doesn’t automatically show up in my nav bar and when i open network settings it doesn’t show my network device even though I do have it up and on the internet.
Hi
bilal bhai
please tell me if any automatic wallpaper changer works with GNOME 3,
i was using webilder on my desktop pinguy 10.10 and desktop nova on my laptop natty – unity
but none works with the newly installed gnome shell
desktop nova shows up in the tray but doesn’t change the wallpaper
can you suggest something?
Dr subodh
hi bilal
i found a Perl script to change wallpaper
works well
but somehow in update the startup applications manager got missing
i am unable to locate it
can you help?
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I have the 100% CPU problem aswell and I have seen another report of it on line. It is intermittent per reboot but seems to happen more often than not. gnome-settings-daemon running as user gdm taking up 100% of both CPUs.
I’m not trolling, I’m just pointing this out: on systems such as Fedora, GNOME 3 is just part of the system. If you’re hankering to use GNOME 3 on a regular basis but don’t want to mess with a PPA that can break the system, Fedora is an option. To add supporting evidence that I’m not trolling, I’ll point out that it’s not for everyone, and that Fedora isn’t geared toward the same desktop-using audience as Ubuntu. YMMV, of course.