Install GNOME Shell Global Menu In Ubuntu Via PPA

Because I've got many requests for this, I've uploaded GNOME Shell Global Menu to the WebUpd8 GNOME 3 PPA.

For those who haven't seen it already, here's Global Menu for GNOME Shell 3.2 in action (old video):

Before installing it, please read the following notes:

• Global Menu for GNOME Shell is currently in alpha! 
• It only works with GTK applications (it may not even work with all GTK apps), so it won't work with Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Java or even Qt apps;
• it can crash GNOME Shell and you'll encounter bugs, including a bug that causes the windows for which the menu has been hidden to display a small gap where the menu used to be (this can be somewhat avoided by using a theme for which the gap is smaller, like Elementary for the titlebar and Zukitwo or Evolve GTK);
• it may not work at all ;
• I didn't create separate packages for each component, it's just one package that provides all the files. So if later on, GNOME Shell Global Menu will be uploaded to its official PPA, you'll have to remove this package.

So use it at your own risk!

Install GNOME Shell Global Menu (for GNOME Shell 3.2) in Ubuntu 11.10 via PPA

1. If you've previously tried to install GNOME Shell Global Menu from source, make sure you've completely removed any installed files:

sudo rm /usr/bin/gnome-globalmenu-manager
sudo rm -rf "/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org"
sudo rm /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu*
sudo rm /usr/lib/gtk-3.0/modules/libglobalmenu*
sudo rm /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.globalmenu.manager.service
sudo rm /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh

2. Then, to add the WebUpd8 GNOME3 PPA and install GNOME Shell Global Menu, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome3-globalmenu

3. Restart GNOME Shell (press ALT + F2 and enter "r") and activate GNOME Shell Global Menu extension using GNOME Tweak Tool, then log out and log back in. This is required and it won't work without logging out! If it still doesn't work, try a system restart.


Tip: if you want to launch an application without Global Menu, use the following command:

GTK_MODULES= APPLICATION-NAME

For example, to launch GIMP with the menu in its window and not on the top panel, use:

GTK_MODULES= gimp

For installing GNOME Shell Global Menu from source, see our initial post: Get A Global Menu In GNOME Shell

Remove GNOME Shell Global Menu

Simply disabling the extension isn't enough to get the menus back. You must remove GNOME Shell Global Menu:

sudo apt-get purge gnome3-globalmenu

(in the command above I've used "purge" so that /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh is removed too)

Then log out and log back in.