Is It Possible To Upgrade Gnome Without Changing The Ubuntu Distro?

[The Simpleton 2]

I've used four versions of Ubuntu till now and never had anything big to complain about. But the latest version just won't run normally on my computer, which is why I've stepped back to using the older 9.10 version. But I've seen how 10.04 looks, and I really liked the new version of GNOME (2.30) - it looked much neater and the best feature of all is that it now has four workspaces instead of just two. I really want to use that feature, which is why I'm looking for a way to upgrade to the latest version without having to install 10.04. Is this possible? Are there any lengthy terminal commands to achieve this?

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!@The SimpletonIn most Linux distributions, we have some kind of a package manager that can enable you to upgrade certain components of the operating system without upgrading other components. Ubuntu provides us with the "apt-get" command that can be used to upgrade software packages independently. Generally, you do not have to upgrade components manually because the automatic updater kicks in and tells you that you have got packages to upgrade. You do not have to use a package manager, but it is the most convenient way to upgrade software. You can download source tarballs of the packages that you want to install, you can manually compile them using the gcc compiler, and you can configure the system to start up those packages. During the process, you might have to install additional software libraries - these software libraries too can be downloaded in their source code form and can be compiled to form the binaries. Compiling source code can become very time consuming as the LFS project documentation might tell you.You might want to try installing updates for Ubuntu 10.04 to check if it runs. Do you get any specific error messages that might help in troubleshooting Gnome 2.30 on your computer? Any information that you can provide to the Ubuntu development team will help them make Ubuntu Linux a much better product.

[truefusion 3]

It is possible, though it may most likely involve compiling GNOME yourself. What i would suggest to do first is find a PPA repository for the version of Ubuntu that you are using. These repositories are normally for testing newer versions of programs and are suitable for those who want to live on the "bleeding edge." If you can find one, see if it has a newer version of GNOME. If it does and it is the version you are looking for, then you are in luck. If not, then you'll have to consider compiling GNOME yourself. Note that if a GNOME update comes along from the official Ubuntu repositories for your version of Ubuntu, that may (will) overwrite any changes you have done. There is a way to freeze updates for packages of your choice, but i don't remember the command for that (so you'll have to look that up). To prevent any updates from undoing any of your work, you'll have to freeze updates for GNOME and its dependencies you install.As k_nitin_r suggested, if you have trouble compiling GNOME, the LFS documentation may help if the documentation that comes with GNOME doesn't.By the way, you can increase the number of workspaces in GNOME by right-clicking on the workspaces panel widget and clicking "Preferences." I'm pretty sure this feature existed long before Ubuntu 10.04 came out. It is an old window-management standard either set by freedesktop.org as part of NetWM (a.k.a EWMH) or ICCCM, so i'm sure it was around even since Ubuntu 6.10 and behind. Some window managers may have a limit of 10 workspaces, but there is really no limit.

[The Simpleton 2]

I don't think I can manage to compile it myself. I would maybe need help at every alternate step I couldn't find anything in the repositories but I came across GNOME Shell and gave it a trial run, and it seemed to be much better than 2.30 And thanks to truefusion for the workspace suggestion - I never got the thought to check the widget's preferences!! I didn't check to see if had any limit, but just by adding another row and column I got 8 workspaces, which is more than sufficient So I think I will stick with this for the time-being till 10.04 decides to work on my PC.