Upgrading to Gnome3 PPA on Natty resolved

Upgrading to Gnome3 PPA on Ubuntu 11.04 had a very unstable behaviour ( Screen flickerings, Nautilus without theme icons etc ..). This occured cause upgrading to Gnome 3 on Natty breaks the default theming used by Ubuntu Classic & the new Unity desktop environments by setting the icon-theme to gnome and the gtk-theme to Adwaita.

Gnome 3 ignores the previous gconf interface settings and only reads the dconf ones.
You can set it right by editing the dconf file using dconf-editor or try the steps below.

Few things as workaround that can be done before GNOME 3 gets a permanent fix, the below steps worked for me hope it helps you too.

1. Remove gnome-accessibility-themes and install gnome-themes-standard
sudo apt-get remove gnome-accessibility-themes
sudo apt-get install gnome-themes-standard

2. Edit /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop
change the line Exec=gnome-session –session=ubuntu to
Exec=gnome-session –session=gnome

below are the content of gnome.desktop file

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Ubuntu
Comment=This session logs you into Ubuntu
Exec=gnome-session –session=gnome
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-session-2.0
~

3. Install gnome-tweak-tool
go to interface tab, set gnome theme to “ADWAITA” and
icon theme to “unity-icon-theme” and reboot

bug # 734563

GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.04

Installed GNOME 3 PPA on Ubuntu 11.04 ..

Command line Instructions

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Alternatively you can use Ubuntu Software Center and add

ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

You will have to select “gnome-shell” and install.
Once done logout and comin back in GNOME3 shell

If you didn’t like the environment, you can remove it following the below mentioned steps.
This steps will revert back to your packages, alternatively you can do this using Software center.

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

if aptitude gives the following output, in this process

Leave the following dependencies unresolved:
gnome-control-center-data recommends gnome-control-center (<< 2.91) […]

Then type this when it asks you to enter yes/no:

– gnome-control-center-data

, dont miss hyphen(-) at the beginning
This will show any packages under Leave the following dependencies unresolved. Type “y” to continue downgrading.

Check out the Packages available for GNOME 3 at:https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/gnome3

NOTE :

Purging wont bring back your UNITY-shell , it will get downgraded to GNOME 2.32, You will have to install UNITY separately if you want …You can easily install it searching in the software center..

There are lots of changes I can see in GNOME3 on Ubuntu 11.04 and the one I used in 10.04.. Well few bugs nautilus task bar icons blurred and flickered, Menus not visible on the taskbar, too much of flickering, lemme try if I can tweak it somehow ..

It didnot worked for me, was really unstable, purged back and installed UNITY …
Will have to wait for 4 more days, GNOME 3.0.1 stable release will be available on 27th this month

What the hell can’t keep both UNITY and GNOME side-by-side