Ubuntu – How to remove Gnome Desktop Environment without messing Unity DE? (Ubuntu 16.04)

desktop-environmentsgnomeuninstallunity

I need to get rid of the GNOME Desktop Environment which has been installed by default when I updated my pc from 15.10 to 16.04.

After a while, I found myself not only with GNOME DE, but also with Cinnamon alongside (in the login screen, I could choose at least five or six DE!)

Now I am using Unity, and I'm happy with that, and I successfully uninstalled Cinnamon, but now I'm afraid that after uninstalling GNOME I will mess up the Unity DE, since I see many packages running in unity with the packagename starting with gnome-… Would someone mind to help me? Thx in advance

Best Answer

To be honest it would be better to back up for files and all config files in the Home folder and do a fresh install of Ubunutu.

If not try this:

Start by running this command:

Uninstall just ubuntu-gnome-desktop

sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-gnome-desktop
sudo apt-get remove gnome-shell 

This will remove just the ubuntu-gnome-desktop package itself.

Uninstall ubuntu-gnome-desktop and it's dependencies

sudo apt-get remove --auto-remove ubuntu-gnome-desktop

This will remove the ubuntu-gnome-desktop package and any other dependant packages which are no longer needed.

Purging your config/data too

If you also want to delete your local/config files for ubuntu-gnome-desktop then this will work.

Caution! Purged config/data can not be restored by reinstalling the package.

sudo apt-get purge ubuntu-gnome-desktop

Or similarly, like this ubuntu-gnome-desktop

sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove ubuntu-gnome-desktop

Then run:

sudo apt-get autoremove 

to remove extra packages and dependencies no longer needed on your system.

You might (or might not, depending on if gdm was removed already) need to use these commands to change your login screen back to Unity's default (which is lightDM) run

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

Hit enter at the prompt and then select lightdm from the options. After that you can remove gdm with

sudo apt-get remove gdm  

Finally run:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity

INFO HERE and HERE

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