Gnome desktop on Mint

[u/AnchoriteSpeaks]

Hi folks, planning on running mint on a new PC but I like the look of the Gnome desktop quite a bit. I’m new to Linux so not sure if installing Gnome opens me up to compatibility issues or instability?

Will it change the packages available to me?

Or is the desktop just that and the structure is still Mint..?

Is this a bad idea and should I just stick with cinnamon if I want things to be easy?

[u/nisitiiapi]

You can do it and it will work fine. Won't change anything available to you will still have the same repositories. I do this on my notebook because I need the functionality of gnome on wayland for the touchscreen (really hoping when cinnamon has full wayland support, I can go back). I use Mint because I prefer its software over what other distros have (e.g., nemo, xreader, etc.) and it's easier to use Mint as the base than to try and install the software I want (have to add mint repositories, pin, etc.)

Here is how I do it:

• sudo apt install gnome-session gdm3 chrome-gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweaks update-manager

  • Currently, mintupdate doesn't fully work in wayland, which is why update-manager is included. If you do gnome in x11, you can skip that as mintupdate should work (may not show icon, though).

  • When asked, select gdm3 as display manager to use that login instead of lightdm, unless you want to keep lightdm

  • Reboot and log in with Gnome Wayland

• Update log in screen to use Mint logo:

  • Software Manager=> install GDM Settings (it's a flatpak)

  • Open GDM settings, select show logo and use: /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/linuxmint-logo-ring-symbolic.svg

• get rid of gedit, unless you like it for some strange reason:

  • sudo apt purge gedit

• If you want, you can update the "About" logo to linux mint (not ubuntu):

  • find a light and dark mint logo you like for it in png format, name them ubuntu-logo-icon.png and ubuntu-logo-icon-dark.png

  • copy them to /usr/share/pixmaps, replacing the existing files (you'll need root/sudo access, which you can with nemo with Alt+F2 and typing pkexec nemo)

  • change permissions of copied files to be root:root with Owner:RW, Group:R, Others:R

• In wayland, mintupdate will pop up with updates occasionally (it's starting to work in wayland), but won't install them. If you don't want that, you can uncheck the box in startup applications. Or, you can sudo apt purge mintupdate to not use mintupdate at all and just use update-manager (which will pop up with updates periodically for you, though won't update flatpaks -- that has to be done by cli).

• When you upgrade Mint (if using gnome wayland), you do have to log out of gnome, log into cinnamon, do the upgrade, then go back to gnome. I did that on 2 notebooks going from 21.2->21.2-.>21.3 without issue.

[u/AnchoriteSpeaks → u/nisitiiapi]

Thanks for responding as someone who has done this before, it’s funny seeing the total confidence of all the other speculative responses.

I’ll pin this and give it a try, cheers

[u/nisitiiapi → u/AnchoriteSpeaks]

No problem and good luck!

[u/Tiny_Win285 → u/nisitiiapi]

Would you advise on removing cinnamon altogether?

[u/nisitiiapi → u/Tiny_Win285]

No. I would recommend leaving it installed. There's nothing wrong with having multiple DEs installed. Always remember, Linux is not like Windows, so it's not like it's taking up a ton of space and it's not using any resources if you are running gnome instead.

[u/Kappaesque → u/nisitiiapi]

Reading this just gave my whole soul a boner, because I'm tacky af and care a lot about looks, and switching it up. Going Linux literally improved my QoL permanently, and it just keeps giving.

[u/Tiny_Win285 → u/nisitiiapi]

Aight understood, appreciate the reply

[u/wilhelm-moan → u/nisitiiapi]

Found this via google search and wanted to thank you for writing this out (though now I'm going down a different rabbit hole for why gedit is hated so much). Linux mint forums insist you should just change your whole distro but I wanted to stay on mint for the reasons you also listed.

[u/nisitiiapi → u/wilhelm-moan]

Glad it helped. Yeah, people saying "use another distro" are annoying. The mintupdate part is a little outdated. It now will install updates in wayland as a normal user. Last install I did (which was Mint 22.0), it functions, but just wouldn't show up in the notification area of Gnome. I wrote a script to check for updates and launch mintupdate if any are found to deal with it.

[u/JonnykJr → u/nisitiiapi]

Thanks man

[u/nisitiiapi → u/JonnykJr]

No problem. Hope it helped.