Try Elementary OS Juno 5.0 | On Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Using Unstable Daily Build

! ELEMENTARY OS JUNO BETA 1 IS OUT, DOWNLOAD IT HERE : https://medium.com/elementaryos/developer-preview-juno-beta-1-is-here-ce9160085bb2

This guide is intended for people who cant wait for Juno beta to launch and just want to try new stuff that comes with it. So don’t expect it to be stable like the Loki release or anything similar but that said it is at this point quite pleasant to use at the moment in my opinion.

Warning! : Almost everything is potentially unstable and it is not recommended to install as it is not a juno so don’t report a bug to eos devs if you find somthing after installing this.

Note #1 : I mentioned a part where i remove some gnome bloatware and use elementary os ones by default so if you want to keep both your desktop environment then skip the “Removing GNOME Stuff For Performance” section and skip to the “Before Switching Back To GNOME” section.

Note #2 : This needs to be done in Ubuntu 18.04 bionic so make sure you have that installed. It is recommended to do a fresh install so you don’t have to loose any data if something fails.

Note #3 : This article is a shameless copy of alex285 article on the same topic but in my defense i did added some sections and edited some stuff (like bionic repo instead of xenial 😐).

Get elementary Daily PPA

Add elementary daily PPA

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

And install elementary-desktopmeta-package which will get all the required packages for elementary os.

sudo apt install elementary-desktop

Optional : You'll be asked during the installation to pick between GDM3 and light-gdm (light-gdm is the default display manager used by elementary os and GDM3 is the one used by Ubuntu). Pick the one you want, so if you want the elementary os one pick light-gdm and if you want to keep the default then choose GDM3 .

Now restart and you'll have a pantheon desktop environment option in login screen. After login in you should have the pantheon desktop environment load without any problems.

Install GNOME Tweak Tool

Now before you do anything install gnome-tweak-tool or your app would look bad as the default theme would be applied.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

Now open tweak tool and select elementary as the default gtk theme and do the same for icon theme.

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 gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/appCenter.list

And add

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

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!

Add Flatpak Support

Elementary’s App Center doesn’t support Flatpak so we need to add it

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

Now add Flathub Store flatpak repo

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

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.

Removing GNOME Stuff For Performance

After using pantheon for some time i had some performance loss and had some issues (don’t remember what except high memory usage). So i decided to remove gnome applications that i don’t need and/or is safe to remove.

Note : Skip this if you want to keep both desktop environments.

List :

1. gnome-shell

I don’t remember if it stopped the lags during alt+tab or using wingpanel but it sure did reduce the glitches i was having previously due to conflicted settings.

2. ubuntu-software

It was always running in background so i removed it cause who uses Ubuntu store anyways 😣

3. gnome-terminal

After having a good time with io.elementary.terminal i decided to remove the duplicate terminal (the gnome-terminal) from the installation.

4. I then removed rest of the bloatware i didn't want through the elementary app store like games and LibreOffice(keep them if you need) which was pretty convenient in my opinion.

Before Switching Back To 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

Do Check Out My Theme Specifically Made For Elementary OS!

Instructions to install in github readme

surajmandalcell/elementary-x

And My Plank Themes!

Instructions in github readme

Dark mode

Dark mode transparent

Light mode

surajmandalcell/plank-themes-x

For any questions leave a reply below :-)