So while Dan Rabbit’s elementaryOS is still considered a “work in progress”, you can, however, with the help of Ubuntu 12.04 set up the needed PPA’s and get yourself this new Desktop Environment and play with it. It should be noted that “luna” is considered “unstable”, but I will be honest with you, I have not really had any issues with it what so ever, or at least nothing that a sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade could not fix.
So the first thing that you need to do is to go download an ISO of 12.04 from Ubuntu. It is possible to do an apt-get dist-upgrade, however, I had better results when i did a fresh install, so YMMV. Once you get the disk image for your processor type (if unsure, get the x86/i386 version), and you can either burn it to a disk (easy way to do so) or use any number of various tools to “burn” the ISO to a flash drive, IF your computer can boot from a flash drive. Booting from a disc will take a bit longer and the install routine will be a bit longer also from disc, but it is the best and standard way to do this.
As how this setup process involves installing Ubuntu 12.04, I wont waste your time and walk you through that. Odds are if your reading this, then your already using Linux, and you have a good idea of how to do this.
Rather than having you enter in a slew of apt-get commands in to a terminal, I have included in this post an attached file that is a set of scripts that does the hard work for you. I am a nice guy.
(right-click: Save Link As) elementaryOs install scripts 0.2 (499)
So, download the file, and unzip the file to a new folder named Luna in your home folder. Your going to want to open a new terminal for issuing the commands.
From the terminal type…
cd Luna && ls
If the directory changes and you successfully see filename in green, then your good to go. If no green, then you need to make the files as executables, to do so, from the same terminal, type…
chmod +x *.sh
This marks the files as mini-apps. do another ls from the terminal to make sure that the file names are green, and that your good to go. The first script that you’re going to want to run is install-luna.sh, so from a terminal..
sudo sh install-luna.sh
This adds the repos needed, updates the system, and fetches the software. From there, your going to want a way to change the GTK3 theme, as how Luna does not currently have a way to do so, so we will from the terminal type…
sudo sh install-ubuntutweak.sh
This has in it a built-in GTK3 theme changer, along with a variety of useful other tools. You may find yourself using this tool often as how it is a great addition to any Ubuntu system.
Now I personally despise the AppMenu from Unity that seems to “carry over” to other DE’s, so from terminal, type in..
sudo sh remove-appmenu.sh
This will remove the Global App Menu, and one last, optional script. I don’t want Unity to be a selectable choice from my login gear menu, so lets remove Unity, ok? This only removed Unity, but not the apps, as how you may want to keep them. From the terminal, type…
sudo sh remove-unity.sh
Wow, no more horrible Unity DE. Now one last tweak, I did not include this in the initial zip as how some like the overlay scroll bars, and some don’t. Here is how you can disable them. from terminal, copy/paste this, and let it do its thing (may have to hit enter key)
sudo su
echo “export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0″ > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars
exit
REMEMBER TO EXIT. Your doing an action as the super-user, and as such, you can royally mess up your machine if you’re not careful. In fact, just close out the terminal because your done now!
Log out of your desktop, and from the gear menu, you should see that unity is missing (Yay!) and that Pantheon is there now.. That’s the elementaryOS DE. While you CAN log-in, i would suggest rebooting, just to make sure.
I highly recommend starting Ubuntu Tweak and “playing around” in it, it has sections that can let you change the GTK3 theme to the elementaryOS theme, but also change the layout of the title bar widgets, minimize, maximize and close. When in doubt, open up Ubuntu Tweak and look around.
And now, some screen caps from when I changed Ubuntu 12.04 to elementaryOS.
