So, like most people who get excited about new software, I installed the Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot update as soon as it was available this week. I have said it loudly on twitter before, but I really dislike Ubuntu Unity. The sad thing is that 11.10 not only comes with Unity as default, it uninstalls Gnome classic on upgrade, so if you were using classic in 11.04 like I was: Rude awakening.
Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to install Gnome 3 and make it the default booting shell for Ubuntu 11.10. First, you will need to install the Gnome shell in the terminal or through the software sources app. (I prefer to install from the terminal as it gives better information if an install fails.)
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
You might be tempted to install GDM instead of using LightDM for the initial login screen. I had trouble doing this and the system absolutely does not like having GDM and LightDM installed at the same time (for obvious reasons). But to get past that, I edited the LightDM conf to always boot into Gnome and went into System Settings > User Accounts and set my user account to auto login. This way i only have to see the LightDM screen or Unity if i specifically log out to that screen. Thankfully, someone on AskUbuntu had the right answer for setting the default shell in LightDM.
Once you’ve installed Gnome, go to the terminal and sudo edit the LightDM conf file (I prefer to use gedit):
sudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Then edit the line that says:
user-session=ubuntu
to
user-session=gnome-shell
Now reboot. This will have you happily booting into Gnome 3 without a login prompt or the ugly ass LightDM screen. On another note, if you don’t want to see that screen when you want to invoke the reboot command (as its not possible from inside Gnome or Unity, you have to log out), from the terminal, type:
sudo reboot
Some other good resources for pimping out your Ubuntu 11.10 Gnome3 install:
Things to tweak after installing Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot
