Ubuntu – How to update GTK+ and/or Gnome on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

14.04gnomegtkgtk3updates

I found a theme that I wish to run, and it says that is is meant to run on Gnome 3.12. It says:

Important note: This theme is designed for Gnome 3.12. May or may not work with other versions of Gnome-shell and GTK.

First of all, the difference between Gnome and GTK is fairly blurry to me still. From what I understand, GTK is the toolkit for which Gnome is built with. I also am not even sure that Ubuntu uses Gnome in any form. Doesn't Ubuntu use Unity instead of Gnome? Or does it use Unity AND some Gnome stuff? I do see some miscellaneous packages in Synaptic that look like Gnome-*.

Anyway, I want to use this theme on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. My OS is up-to-date, and I have recently ran sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade which I believe upgrades all packages to their most recent version.

However, the libgtk-3-0, libgtk-3-common and libgtk-3-bin packages says that I am running 3.10.8. Shouldn't the libgtk stuff be 3.12 since I ran the sudo apt-get upgrade command?

How do I update GTK and/or GNOME so that I can use this theme?

Theme: Zukitwo on Gnome-Look.org

Please note I am using a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install (not Ubuntu GNOME). I have not installed any desktop environments, which means I am using Unity. Everything is up-to-date according to Ubuntu Software Center.

Best Answer

The Gnome Team have a ppa which has Gnome 3.12 in it. Please note last time I looked, a few months ago it was not ready for general use.

To install Gnome alongside Unity you need to run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-deskop

You will need to select and use the GDM desktop manager when asked to choose.

EDIT: At least as of 2014-08-26, there is a version conflict in dependencies for gnome-control-center and ubuntu-control-center (for versions of gnome-settings-daemon). They will not live side by side happily unless you install an older version of gnome.

Related Question