How To Install GNOME 3.10 In Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

GNOME 3.10 has been released yesterday and I've received requests to write an article on how to upgrade to it in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, so here goes. 

The instructions below are only for those who want to use GNOME Shell (Ubuntu GNOME users, Unity users who want to switch to GNOME Shell, etc.) because of some bugs with the GNOME 3.10 PPA packages and Unity.

The GNOME 3 Next PPA, announced not so long ago, contains GNOME 3.10 packages that are considered stable. Unfortunately, the PPA currently only has a few packages: GNOME Shell (including the official extensions), GNOME Themes, GTK3, Mutter, Clutter, Network Manager, Vala, Wayland and WebkitGTK so basically, to get a GNOME 3.10 desktop which includes System Settings, the core apps, etc., you must also add the GNOME 3 Staging PPA which contains packages that have known bugs and regressions, "sometimes of critical nature" mentions the PPA description.

In my test (I'm using GNOME 3.10 right now on my main computer) under Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, I've added both the GNOME 3 Next PPA and the GNOME 3 Staging PPA and I've encountered the following issues:

• LightDM doesn't work so if you plan on using these PPAs, make sure you switch to GDM prior to upgrading;
• using these PPAs pretty much breaks Unity: the AppIndicators don't work, the applications don't show up in Dash, the mouse is invisible (update: this invisible mouse issue can be fixed by using the following command: "gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.cursor active false"), the new CSD applications don't have shadows and there are probably other issues too but I've only used Unity for a few minutes. So only add these PPAs for now if you don't have Unity installed or you don't plan on using Unity;
• some applications may not work properly or not work at all - in my test, Synapse stopped working while gThumb doesn't display the thumbnails properly.

So only follow the instructions below if you know what you're doing and know how to use PPA-Purge to revert the changes in case something goes wrong!

What will be upgraded: by using the instructions below, besides GNOME Shell (and the default extensions), GDM, GTK, GNOME Control Center, etc. and various libraries, the following applications will be upgraded to version 3.10.0: Cheese, Eye Of GNOME, Evince, Gedit, Boxes, Clocks, Contacts, Documents, Font Viewer, System Monitor, Terminal, Tweak Tool, Weather and Files (Nautilus). Web (Epiphany) won't be upgraded to version 3.10 for now, but to 3.9.91.

What won't be upgraded to version 3.10: unfortunately, the other GNOME 3.10 applications are missing from these PPAs: Music, Notes (Bijben - version 3.8.4 is available in the official repositories), Maps, Photos and Software. Totem won't be upgraded for now either.

That said, let's proceed to upgrading GNOME to the latest 3.10 version in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander.

Upgrade To GNOME 3.10 In Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

1. Switch to GDM if you're not using it already.

Like I was telling you above, in my test LightDM didn't work after using the two GNOME3 PPAs, so install GDM if it's not already installed:

sudo apt-get install gdm

And select GDM instead of LightDM when prompted.

If you want to switch between LightDM, GDM, etc. see THESE instructions.

2. Add the GNOME3 Next and GNOME3 Staging PPAs and upgrade to GNOME 3.10

Before adding the GNOME 3 Staging PPA, make sure you read its description.

Now let's add the PPAs and upgrade to GNOME 3.10:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-next
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Important: when running "dist-upgrade", make sure you read the output before entering "y" to make sure no important packages are removed!

Also, since GNOME 3.10 doesn't work properly with Unity, you must want to use GNOME Shell, so install it using the following command if you didn't install it already:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

To install all the GNOME apps (and the default GNOME Shell extensions) that aren't installed by default in Ubuntu, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-documents gnome-contacts epiphany-browser gnome-boxes gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweak-tool bijiben gnome-clocks

Tip: to avoid issues with black elements in various applications (and to get the default GNOME 3.10 scrollbars which now support fine scrolling - to use it, hold SHIFT while clicking on the scrollbar thumb), remove the Ubuntu overlay scrollbars:

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar

3. Restart the computer.

For me, restarting via the system menu didn't work so if that happens for you too, reboot via command line:

sudo reboot

And in the login screen, select the "GNOME" session.

Ambiance doesn't work properly with applications that use client side decorations so if you were using it, change to Adwaita theme using GNOME Tweak Tool (the application should have been installed with the last command from step 2 above). Another theme that supports GNOME 3.10 and client side decorations is Numix.

Revert the changes

If something doesn't work or you simply don't like GNOME 3.10 and want to revert the changes and go back to the default GNOME 3.8 available in the official Ubuntu 13.10 repositories, you need to purge the PPAs added using the instructions above, starting with the GNOME 3 Staging PPA:

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

If you've removed the Overlay Scrollbars package, install it back using the following command:

sudo apt-get install overlay-scrollbar

If you were using LightDM and want to switch back to it, follow THESE instructions.

And finally, reboot.