How to safely remove GNOME 3 and Unity?

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi there,

I had installed Ubuntu 16.04 back in the day, then installed MATE via apt-get. Over time, I upgraded it to 18.04 and will soon hop on to 20.04. That said, I still have GNOME 3 and Unity desktop environments that are of no use to me, so I would like to safely get rid of them without breaking anything.

How do I do that?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

2

Last time I did this on 18.04 LTS and documented the process on AskUbuntu. So I can cite my answer:

On already installed Ubuntu LTS you should install Ubuntu MATE meta-package with:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-mate-desktop^

and then select MATE session on the login screen.

Removing GNOME session is also possible with:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-shell ubuntu-gnome-desktop \
ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-unity-desktop unity-session
sudo apt-get autoremove

And main GNOME software may be removed with (do not run it if unsure):

sudo apt-get purge activity-log-manager aisleriot alacarte baobab eog \
evince evince-common evolution-data-server-common file-roller gedit \
gedit-common gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gir1.2-gnomedesktop-3.0 \
gnome-accessibility-themes gnome-bluetooth gnome-calendar \
gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-font-viewer \
gnome-getting-started-docs gnome-mahjongg gnome-menus gnome-mines \
gnome-online-accounts gnome-panel gnome-power-manager gnome-screensaver \
gnome-screenshot gnome-session-bin gnome-session-common \
gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell-common gnome-shell-extension-appindicator \
gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock gnome-software gnome-software-common \
gnome-sudoku gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal \
gnome-terminal-data gnome-themes-extra gnome-themes-extra-data \
gnome-todo gnome-todo-common gnome-user-docs gnome-user-guide \
libgnome-autoar-0-0 libgnome-bluetooth13 libgnome-games-support-1-3 \
libgnome-games-support-common libgnomekbd8 libgnomekbd-common \
libgnome-menu-3-0 libgnome-todo metacity mutter-common \
nautilus nautilus-data nautilus-extension-brasero \
nautilus-sendto network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntu rhythmbox \
software-center totem totem-common webbrowser-app xwayland zeitgeist-core

sudo apt-get autoremove

After executing of these two commands you will get the system very similar to standard Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS installation.

2 Likes
3

Thanks a lot Norbert X. I entered all the commands and it (almost) worked like a charm. The only error message I got afterwards was related to libgtk3-nocsd and it got fixed by installing libgtk3-nocsd0.

There's one remaining glitch though, and it had started before removing GNOME 3 and Unity: I had removed the gnome-screensaver package then, preferring to use the screensaver of MATE. The problem is that despite its settings (Regard the computer as idle after 4 minutes, "Activate screensaver when computer is idle" and "Lock screen when screensaver is active" options checked), it never gets activated. The preview works, but when I leave the computer, the screensaver never locks the screen and I never get those great cosmos images.

How can I fix that?

4

I hope that reinstallation of MATE Screensaver will fix the issue. Try with

sudo apt-get install --reinstall mate-screensaver mate-screensaver-common

And make sure that you do not have *xscreensaver* packages installed.

5

Unfortunately, reinstalling mate-screensaver and mate-screensaver-common didn't fix the issue. Just yesterday I upgraded to 20.04 focal, but the issue remains, I can't use MATE's screensaver (and I verified with Synaptic, I have no *xscreensaver* package installed).

Apart from that, I noticed a few packages that I could remove in addition to the list you provided above: gnome-calc and unity-scope*.

Thanks again for your help @Norbert_X :slight_smile: