How To Try elementary OS 5.0 — Juno on Ubuntu 18.04 (pre-release)

First of, if you want to use elementary Juno, you should wait for their final release or some beta, and get that! It wont be long anyway! This is just a guide for the inpatients how to early try Juno! ..or some Juno-Like experience, since Juno has some unique things like a different login screen ( lightdmthat i didnt bother to set!), and a new installer ofc!

Second, this guide won’t mess your Ubuntu/GNOME installation, it wont destroy everything, it should be safe to follow, but it is still pre-release software, it has bugs, and right now it also has a performance/graphics regression on Pantheon Shell (Gala technically)! Still, and on my use at least is functional, and fun to use!

Some context! Juno is based on Ubuntu 18.04, and Bionic’s desktop is already using GNOME 3.28. So Juno is going to use the very latest GNOME stack, and this is the environment that elementary developers are working on!

Get Bionic!

First thing you wanna do is to get Bionic of course! You can do that by downloading a daily build, or update your current system to a pre-release

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo update-manager -d

If all good, you should now be on a shiny brand new 18.04, with GNOME 3.28 beta!

Get elementary Daily PPA

Next add elementary daily PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/daily
sudo apt-get update

And install elementary-desktopmeta-package, that should install all the required components

sudo apt install elementary-desktop

You can see all the packages of the PPA on LP, and install things individually, if you dont want everything

Restart, and if all good, on GDM you will have a Pantheon Desktop option, that it will log you in elementary!

Open GNOME Tweak Tool and set theme and icons to elementary! On the end of the post there is a video that demos how to install elementary Tweaks!

Remember! This is pre-release software! There are bugs! But there is not much point to refer them, since there are daily updates, and daily fixes, and different bugs, from three projects! Ubuntu, GNOME & elementary!

Install App Center Repo

To get the elementary applications from their App Store (App Center video), install the App Center repo

Create a new repository file, just to have things clean

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/appCenter.list

And add

deb http://packages.elementary.io/appcenter xenial main
# deb-src http://packages.elementary.io/appcenter xenial main

Notice that App Center still uses Xenial. At some point that will be updated to Bionic

Add The Repo Key

wget -O - http://packages.elementary.io/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

And update

sudo apt update

Open App Center, and if all good you now should see something like that!

The featured apps are from App Center repo! Some of these apps like NoteJot (that you should definitely install!) are also available on Flathub!

Add Flatpak Support

elementary’s App Center doesn’t support Flatpak, but since you are in Ubuntu, you have already the Ubuntu Store!

Not sure if Ubuntu by default has Flatpak support, but if not, lets add it!

sudo apt install flatpak
sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

Then add Flathub Store

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Now when you install a Flatpak App, it should also install the elementary Flatpak theme. If not, lets manually install it

flatpak install flathub org.gtk.Gtk3theme.elementary

Now lets install a Flatpak app, just to test everything’s fine. Let’s do Eolie

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Eolie

Note that the first time you download a Flatpak, the download will be huge because it will get all the required runtimes (eg. GNOME Platform, NVIDIA etc). Also there are very often updates on Flatpak runtimes! It is almost daily, depending how many you have installed!

Start Eolie, and if all good, you should see something like this!

Now you should be wondering what in the lords name is this? This is a perfect example how elementary theme can screw up a GNOME App! And vice versa! Adwaita theme screws up elementary apps!

However mission was accomplished, Flathub and Flatpak theme worked perfectly!

Switching Back In GNOME

elementary will do some things that when you jump to GNOME Session it will break

1. Some GNOME Settings (like Mutter shortcuts)
2. All GNOME Settings ..like the actual app :)

If you dont want to remove the whole elementary installation, you can restore settings by removing:

sudo apt remove elementary-default-settings

If you want to go back in elementary, you should reinstall this package though, otherwise elementary shortcuts will be broken

To fix GNOME Control Center

sudo apt remove switchboard-gnome-control-center
sudo apt remove switchboard-gnome-control-center-override

To Restore Everything

Just remove the two sources (daily PPA, and AppCenter) from Ubuntu Software Manager

Alternatively you can purge the PPA

sudo ppa-purge ppa:elementary-os/daily

And Dont Miss..

..to make your Plank super cool!

If you have some question, or you want to correct something, please use G+ if possible! Medium respond system is a joke!

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