How To Install GNOME 3.12 In Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 (Trusty Tahr)

GNOME 3.12 was released a while back but it wasn't included by default in Ubuntu 14.04, so here's how to install GNOME 3.12 in Ubuntu GNOME 14.04.

Currently, GNOME 3.12 is available in the GNOME 3 Staging PPA and it's not considered stable / ready for general use:

"The packages here have been deemed not ready for general use, they have known bugs and/or regressions, sometimes of a critical nature. Mostly things should run smoothly but be prepared to use ppa-purge, when you encounter issues"

You may be wondering why I wrote "install GNOME 3.12 in Ubuntu GNOME 14.04"... well, that's because if you add this PPA on an Ubuntu (with Unity) 14.04 system, some Unity packages will be removed and thus, Unity will stop working.

So the GNOME 3 Staging PPA should only be used by Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 (don't add the PPA if you're using Unity!) users who know how to fix their system in case something goes wrong!

It is possible to use this PPA to install GNOME 3.12 on systems with Unity, but Unity will stop working and the instructions are more complicated, especially if you want to revert the changes, so I won't add instructions for such cases here.

That said, let's proceed.

Install GNOME 3.12 in Ubuntu GNOME 14.04

Warning: Please read the output before entering 'Y' for the "dist-upgrade" command below to make sure important packages won't be removed and if the "dist-upgrade" command tries to remove important pages, abort the installation and remove the PPA! Also, it's a good idea to save the list of packages upgraded by using the instructions below, in case you want to revert the changes ppa-purge fails.

At this point, only the GNOME 3 Staging PPA is required but some packages might be "promoted" to the stable GNOME 3 PPA and that might break some stuff if you only have the Staging PPA added, so using the instructions below, you'll be adding both the GNOME 3 PPA as well as the GNOME 3 Staging PPA.

To add the GNOME 3 and GNOME3 Staging PPAs and upgrade to GNOME 3.12 in Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 (Trusty Tahr), use the following commands:

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

To install all the GNOME 3 apps (GNOME Clocks, Maps, Music, Bijiben, Polari, etc.) that aren't installed by default as well as the default GNOME Shell extensions and GNOME Tweak Tool (which I'm sure you'll need later on), use the following command:

sudo apt-get install bijiben polari gnome-clocks gnome-weather gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-photos gnome-documents gnome-contacts epiphany-browser gnome-sushi gnome-boxes gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweak-tool

After the installation/upgrade completes, restart your system (a logout/login might be enough but to avoid running into issues, a restart is safer).

How to revert the changes and go back to GNOME 3.10

If you encounter issues of you simply don't like GNOME 3.12, you can revert the changes by using PPA Purge. To purge the GNOME 3 PPAs and go back to GNOME 3.10 (which is default in Ubuntu 14.04), use the following commands:

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

And once the PPA was purged, restart your system.