This September, a new desktop will be unveiled to the world in the form of GNOME 3. This desktop will change the way people view, work with, and think of the desktop. It's different, it's intuitive, and it follows the current evolution of what the desktop should be. But best of all, it's all about Linux.
The installation
Now for the rough part. Getting GNOME Shell installed and running isn’t easy and it doesn’t always work (no matter how well you follow the steps). My installation is done on a clean Ubuntu 10.4 distribution. The painless way to install is to follow these steps:
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
If you are lucky, once the installation is complete, you can hit <Alt>F2 and then type gnome-shell –replace. If you ARE lucky you will happily see GNOME Shell take the place of your current desktop. If you are not lucky, you will wind up with an error or two. If you are not lucky you will have to jump through some hoops – those hoops being:
- sudo apt-get install jhbuild
- wget http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-shell/plain/tools/build/gnome-shell-build-setup.sh
- bash gnome-shell-build-setup.sh
- jhbuild build
If this completes, try the gnome-shell –replace command again and cross your fingers. Hopefully by now you have a running GNOME Shell instance and can start to appreciate where the GNOME developers are heading.
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