Install Gnome Shell in Mint 13 (Cinnamon edition)

[bimsebasse]

Installing Gnome Shell doesn't replace Cinnamon but creates a new alternate login session which will have Gnome Shell as its environment.

1. Install required and recommended Gnome Shell packages:

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sudo apt-get install gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-tweak-tool

2. Log out and choose the new session "GNOME" from the login screen options. This leads you to a near vanilla Gnome Shell experience quite different from the extensions-tweaked Gnome Shell in Mint 12 MGSE you may have gotten used to:


3. Add standard extensions through the webupd8 Gnome 3 PPA:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions gnome-shell-extensions-common

Done. Remember to visit https://extensions.gnome.org/ which is the best place to add and manage your extensions (I'm still half-struck with childlike wonder every time I activate an extension by clicking "on" on the website and my desktop changes appearance, it's amazing and addictive ). The Gnome shell settings tool (gnome-tweak-tool) is called "Advanced Settings" in menus, run it at least once to set up your new desktop.

[barney]

Hi will this also work in the Mate edition?

Thank you

[proxima_centauri]

There is also the GNOME3 PPA https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/gnome3
It contains parts of v3.4 not included in the Ubuntu repos.

[lunatico]

This is nice but OMG!!!! I was having trouble deciding between MATE and Cinnamon now I have to add gnome-shell to the list.

[bimsebasse]

Hi will this also work in the Mate edition?

Thank you

Not sure

[Linoman]

Hi will this also work in the Mate edition?

Thank you

From someone who tried I ended up messing up my Mate installation. Rather install the Cinnamon edition and then install Gnome Shell. Much easier and seems to work quite well

[spider623]

warning to all cinnamon user do not install gnome shell 3.4 it will kill cinnamon because of a file that changed name from b to c and its need both by gnome and cinnamon the ideal is the 3.2 in the repos until cinnamon 1.5 or 1.6 i found that the hard way(2 min to and repos and install gnome and 3 min to remove the repos and downgrade again, also i had to reinstall and upgrade cinnamon)

[zerozero]

spider623, where did you installed gnome-shell? mint12 or mint13? and from where?
the version available in the precise/mint13 repos is 3.4 http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/gnome-shell and (afaik) that one has no issues with cinnamon.
apparently your story is different.

[gslack]

Knew here, just switched to Mint from Ubuntu full time. Tried various versions of mint several times but 13 stuck with me. Just wanted to say I tried the method in the OP and it worked fine for me. A few issues pop up for me later though. The "advanced settings" or gnome tweak tool doesn't load for me in Gnome shell. Which pretty much makes gnome shell pointless when I have a perfectly fine Cinn installed already. Tried a reinstall and all the usual to no effect. It's not a big deal for me so I didn't bother trying to DB or troubleshoot beyond the obvious. Seeing as how the install is just the base to get shell to run, it's most likely some dependency missing. Perhaps GDM or some of the other files. Looked into a full Gnome shell install and it required replacing MDM with GDM which is nearly a downgrade IMHO. so I chose not to go on with it. This could also be my particular system setup as well.

Either way the above tutorial works well for a base Gnone shell install and keeping MDM and the rest of your Mint working. It IS a strictly base install though, and therefore a limtied Gnome shell experience.

[bimsebasse]

Knew here, just switched to Mint from Ubuntu full time. Tried various versions of mint several times but 13 stuck with me. Just wanted to say I tried the method in the OP and it worked fine for me. A few issues pop up for me later though. The "advanced settings" or gnome tweak tool doesn't load for me in Gnome shell. Which pretty much makes gnome shell pointless when I have a perfectly fine Cinn installed already. Tried a reinstall and all the usual to no effect. It's not a big deal for me so I didn't bother trying to DB or troubleshoot beyond the obvious. Seeing as how the install is just the base to get shell to run, it's most likely some dependency missing. Perhaps GDM or some of the other files. Looked into a full Gnome shell install and it required replacing MDM with GDM which is nearly a downgrade IMHO. so I chose not to go on with it. This could also be my particular system setup as well.

Either way the above tutorial works well for a base Gnone shell install and keeping MDM and the rest of your Mint working. It IS a strictly base install though, and therefore a limtied Gnome shell experience.

Did you follow step 3? That's what step 3 basically is for, providing you a working Advanced Settings. I had the same problem you had, until I put the extensions site on hold and downloaded the extensions-common package from the PPA.

[gslack]

Knew here, just switched to Mint from Ubuntu full time. Tried various versions of mint several times but 13 stuck with me. Just wanted to say I tried the method in the OP and it worked fine for me. A few issues pop up for me later though. The "advanced settings" or gnome tweak tool doesn't load for me in Gnome shell. Which pretty much makes gnome shell pointless when I have a perfectly fine Cinn installed already. Tried a reinstall and all the usual to no effect. It's not a big deal for me so I didn't bother trying to DB or troubleshoot beyond the obvious. Seeing as how the install is just the base to get shell to run, it's most likely some dependency missing. Perhaps GDM or some of the other files. Looked into a full Gnome shell install and it required replacing MDM with GDM which is nearly a downgrade IMHO. so I chose not to go on with it. This could also be my particular system setup as well.

Either way the above tutorial works well for a base Gnone shell install and keeping MDM and the rest of your Mint working. It IS a strictly base install though, and therefore a limtied Gnome shell experience.

Did you follow step 3? That's what step 3 basically is for, providing you a working Advanced Settings. I had the same problem you had, until I put the extensions site on hold and downloaded the extensions-common package from the PPA.

I thought so, was late and I was very tired. Perhaps I missed it or did something wrong. I will try again ASAP. TY..

EDIT: Okay I am officially the dummy of this thread. You were right.. I must have missed that 3rd step... Thank you again for the help....

PLEASE DISREGARD MY PREVIOUS POST!! I was suffering from a bad case of 12 hour night shifts all week. So I confirm on my system at least if you follow all of the steps in OP (including the 3rd step which I missed) It does indeed work for me.. Sorry for the confusion.

[bimsebasse]

Cool, glad it worked out.

[AZOTh999]

Bimsebasse:

Great post as usual. Good to see that I'm not the only cat who was enamoured with Gnome3/gnome-shell from Lisa; and while Cinnamon is pretty nice, I'm glad to have Gnome3/gnome-shell back (it's slick and seems a little thinner than Cinnamon on the netbook I'm running it on).

The only thing I haven't been able to crack yet thus far: do you know of a way of adding the Mint menu extension? The menu extension they had in there seems to just pop an empty menu tree onto the panel. In a way, I suppose it's superfluous, as you can just hit the hot-corner and see everything in the menu in that interface. All the same, if you know of a trick of getting the Mint menu integrated back into the panel, that'd be another cool trick to add to the collection. If I figure it out, I'll repost what I find here.

AZOTh999

[bimsebasse]

I'll look into it but you should consider Axe Menu meanwhile, it makes the MGSE menu look like an unfinished draft.

[AZOTh999]

I'll look into it but you should consider Axe Menu meanwhile, it makes the MGSE menu look like an unfinished draft.

Wow. That is a pretty sweet menu extension. I might have to look into tweaking the config _just slightly_ to trim the vertical size a tad for the netbook, but is really nice on a laptop/desktop with a full monitor screen. Nice find. Thanks for the tip!

(Edit): Turns out there was a nice ~/.config/axemenu.conf post in the comments with a nice tweak for netbook-sized screens submitted by user "easy":
axemenu.conf
Worked like a charm.

[beerw0lf]

Thank you for the tutorial. I finally went and upgraded my mint12. I've gotten so used to the Gnome 3 and MGSE that I delayed upgrading for so long.

Upgraded via reinstallation method. Everything went well. Even my encrypted home partition was recognised and mounted during the install.

[Tim_Olaguna]

I tried to do this in Linux Mint Debian (running as a MATE interface) but received this response:

tim@tim-debian ~ $ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-tweak-tool
[sudo] password for tim:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package gnome-shell is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'gnome-shell' has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package gnome-tweak-tool
tim@tim-debian ~ $

But it worked wonderfully well in Linux Mint 13. I'd like to have the option of running this shell in LMDE.

[zerozero]

Tim_Olaguna,
can you provide us, please, the output of

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inxi -Sr

and

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apt policy gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-tweak-tool

[Tim_Olaguna]

Tim_Olaguna,
can you provide us, please, the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -Sr

and

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apt policy gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-tweak-tool

I'll be glad to later this week. My system is down while I replace it with a new box. Thanks for your help and interest.

[debuntu]

Thanks, it worked for me.