How to Install GNOME-3 in Ubuntu Ultimate 3.0 (Natty)

Gnome is one of the most popular desktop environments on linux based operating systems and its latest iteration, 3.0, is drastically different from the previous versions and it also shows a departure from the Gnome philosophy of pushing out incremental updates. Many of you may be frustrated with the Unity interface or legacy Gnome or you may just want to try it out to check out the “bling factor”, here is a method for installing it, by using the official Gnome 3 PPA.

Note 1: This method is experimental and may break your ubuntu installation. You have been warned.
Note 2: Installation of Gnome 3 will remove Unity.

Step 1:
Install PPA Purge using the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

In case anything goes wrong, this can help by removing the Gnome 3 PPA and downgrading the packages.

Step 2:
Add the Gnome 3 PPA by issuing the following command:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

Step 3:
Refresh your package list and update the packages by issuing the following commands one by one:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Step 4:
Install Gnome Shell, which is the default Gnome 3 interface.

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

If everything goes well, you should have the Gnome 3 desktop.

Restart your computer and select Ubuntu Gnome- Shell Desktop from the ubuntu login screen.

Open the update manager and update your system again, because there may be packages which failed to update.

In case things go wrong during the installation, use PPA Purge to revert your system to its previous state by downgrading the packages installed by the Gnome PPA. This can be done by issuing the following command
$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

Hopefully you may not need to use PPA Purge.

Enjoy your new desktop environment!