Tutorial: How to remove/uninstall Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

May 31, 2011

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Have you installed Gnome 3 from ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 because you were tired of Unity or just because you wanted to test the new shell and this has broken your login? Are you now on the login screen but no graphic environment will ever work?

Then you have to remove gnome 3 following the steps below:

– Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to access the terminal window and log in. At the prompt type following commands:

– sudo apt-get remove libgtk-3-common

– sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

– sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

– sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

– sudo apt-get install gnome-panel

– sudo apt-get install lightdm

– sudo shutdown –r now

The pc will reboot and you should be able to use Unity/Classic login again.

05/04/2013 *UPDATE* (thank you Anthony)!:

If after the reboot the machine is not booting in Unity or Gnome3 and it’s just loading the terminal, maybe you’ll have to reconfigure lightdm to be the default login manager:

– sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

You will see a window similar to this one (where you should then choose “lightdm”)

Good luck!

Comments

23 responses to “Tutorial: How to remove/uninstall Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)”

Anthony Mills

2 June 2011

Thanks mate Unity was driving me insane on my work desktop but Gnome 3 wouldn’t login in so time to swallow my pride and switch back to unity until I have time to switch to mint.

Reply
1. Stefano Prenna
  
  2 June 2011
  
  Or just use Ubuntu Classic…
  
  Reply
tuhina jain

9 June 2011

hey! after sudo apt-get remove it gives an error of unmet dependencies
even after sudo apt-get -f install the error continues

Reply
1. Stefano Prenna
  
  9 June 2011
  
  Maybe you have installed something else that is conflicting with the package you are trying to remove (I guess libgtk-3-common). Basically the system is telling you that if you remove that package, other software will not work anymore as it requires that package to work.
  Try to install apt-rdepends by typing:
  
  sudo apt-get install apt-rdepends
  
  then you can execute it:
  
  sudo apt-rdepends -r libgtk-3-common
  
  (change libgtk-3-common for the package you are receving the error)
  
  You will see a list of dependencies and probably you’ll be able to identify which software is causing the issue.
  
  Reply
Russell

28 June 2011

thank god for these instructions, I tried removing all the updated packages, but nothing… thanks again

Reply
LinuEver

23 March 2012

Thanks alot for the explainnig

Reply
ikp4success

14 April 2012

I did these accordingly. After It restarted it showed checking battery state. And it was like that didn’t go anywhere. I checked on forums for solutions somebody said it was display drivers, but I installed nvidia drivers instead of AMD now the screen is blank I can’t get to log in screen. Now am pissed off with ubuntu. This the third time my laptop is crashing, neva had this problems with windows. Any help will be deeply appreciated thanks in advance.

Reply
1. Stefano Prenna
  
  15 April 2012
  
  Most of the times a blank screen without the chance of reaching the login screen is drivers related.This can be rectified by using a mode similar to what you may know as “safe mode” in Windows.The first thing you need to look at is which graphic adapter do your computer have. If you don’t have this information, just check your pc manual or search its brand and model online for the specifications. At that point we will be able to understand which driver has to be installed and you’ll recover the login screen and all the functionalities of your Ubuntu…
  
  Reply
  1. Josue
    
    20 May 2012
    
    Ok same thing happened to me… I have an amd vision…. And it’s stuck at te battery check thing and that stuff
    
    Reply
  2. ikp4success
    
    8 August 2013
    
    Hi Sorry for the late reply, i found out that My computer wasn’t strong enough to handle Gnome, becos of the high graphics. Sometime it switch back to the low graphic resolution, like Gnome 2.0 i think. Anyway i formatted it and Install just ubuntu. Now i got a good laptop that has no Cd. drive, but it came with window 8. Its difficult now to install Ubuntu 13 on it along side window 8 becos of UEFI .
    
    Reply
ikp4success

14 April 2012

I did these accordingly. After It restarted it showed checking battery state. And it was like that didn’t go anywhere. I checked on forums for solutions somebody said it was display drivers, but I installed nvidia drivers instead of AMD now the screen is blank I can’t get to log in screen. Now am pissed off with ubuntu. This the third time my laptop is crashing, neva had this problems with windows. Any help will be deeply appreciated thanks in advance.3

Reply
Anthony

3 April 2013

Tried above insructions and can’t login ubuntu, now I am trying to rescue through command line >:-(

Reply
1. Stefano Prenna
  
  3 April 2013
  
  Couple of checks:1. Which version of Ubuntu are you using?2. Are you sure you haven’t previously removed Unity?3. Have you got error messages while removing Gnome3?
  
  Reply
Anthony

4 April 2013

I have ubuntu 11.10 64bit on dell xps 15, I had not previously removed Unity. I figured out that I had somehow had my display manager set to gdm, which was the root of my problem. It didn’t login (couldn’t load gui, it was stucked at ubuntu logo) because couldn’t start gdm. I fixed it by reconfiguring the display manager to ligntdm instead of gdm and then restart. after restart login was successful and later reinstalled the packages that have lost, (eventually i had a backup). I would suggest anyone is going to remove gnome 3, firstly keep a backap of all of his/her packages installed, and be sure that display manager is reconfigured to lightdm.

Reply
1. Stefano Prenna
  
  5 April 2013
  
  Good points Anthony, thank you for your feedback. I’ve updated the post as it will probably help more people 🙂
  
  Reply
Iain Hamilton (@TheIainHamilton)

25 April 2013

After purging I was missing several packages until running

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

this did the trick should anyone find themselves in a similar situation

Reply
1. Iain Hamilton (@TheIainHamilton)
  
  25 April 2013
  
  should also add that this may be down to 13.04’s actual release resulting in the dist-upgrade no longer working.
  
  Reply
Stephen Pizzuti

15 May 2013

You really make it appear so easy together
with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually one thing which I
believe I would never understand. It sort of feels too
complicated and extremely vast for me. I am having a look forward for your subsequent put up,
I’ll try to get the cling of it!

Reply
Medicare set aside

6 August 2013

What’s up i am kavin, its my first time to commenting anywhere, when i read this piece of writing i thought i could also create comment due to this good paragraph.

Reply