I’ve been bothering myself looking at endless videos about the new Ubuntu 11.10. I’m a year behind, on 10.10, so I’ve been torn between upgrading and the work involved in a new install, not to mention the work I’m supposed to be doing… It’s been an eventful time in my life and time has been limited and energy even more so.

The thing about it is that the pictures and videos I’ve seen of Unity are not energizing – not to me at any rate, and I know it has its many admirers and converts. However, I’ve been taken by the Gnome 3 gnome-shell on 11.10, and have watched several videos with pleasure, so I was tempted.

And then I discovered that I could install an earlier version of gnome-shell from the Software Center in about 20 seconds. How could I have missed that?

So it was back onto the web to hunt for videos and articles.

First of all see How to Install and use Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

And then this video, for example, How to install Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

It looked great and I was in an edgy mood (probably a bit reckless) and I installed it from the Software Center, and added

Hit ALT + F2,run gconf-editor, and type the command

gnome-shell –replace

Have a look at the further tweaks suggested from 1’24 on the video.

It’s not the fancy gnome-shell you’ll find in Ubuntu 11.10, but I love it.

gnome-shell on my Ubuntu 10.10. Click to enlarge.

Ironically I couldn’t find the Software Center once I’d rebooted. Click on your name, System Preferences and you’ll find it in there. You can right click and make it a favourite in Activities/Applications if you wish.

The latest version supported in Ubuntu 10.10 is 2.32, apparently.
You can also install the full Gnome 3 gnome-shell, but that’s a bit more complicated.

We’ll see how I get on…