Remove Gnome Shell completely after installing it?

Question

I wanted to try gnome-shell in 11.10 (also 12.04 now)

I removed it, however, classic Gnome is still there and the battery icon is changed (too big and can't use a icon pack on it like faenza)

Also, numerous applications were added and the entries remain on the login screen.

How can I remove it completely, rolling back all changes made when installing gnome-shell?

Answer 1

Sounds like you're logging in to the Gnome fallback session, which is installed along with gnome-shell. Remove that, too, and things should be back to normal.

The following terminal commands will take care of that:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-session-fallback
sudo apt-get markauto

The second command will remove any other auto-installed packages whose dependents are no longer installed (like gnome-panel and gnome-applets).

You might want to change your theme back to Ambiance, if you changed it to Adwaita for Gnome Shell, and you can do that in System Preferences under Appearance.

Answer 2

software center

Gnome-Shell and Gnome-Classic (also known as gnome-fallback/gnome-session-fallback) can be simply removed from the Software Center:

search for gnome shell

search for gnome-session-fallback

remove all packages

However, removing from the software center does not remove every package originally installed.

To do this, copy and paste the following into gnome-terminal:

to remove gnome-shell

sudo apt-get purge alacarte cups-pk-helper gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0 gir1.2-caribou-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0 gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-folks-0.6 gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-gdesktopenums-3.0 gir1.2-gee-1.0 gir1.2-gjsdbus-1.0 gir1.2-gkbd-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-mutter-3.0 gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0 gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gir1.2-polkit-1.0 gir1.2-telepathyglib-0.12 gir1.2-telepathylogger-0.2 gir1.2-upowerglib-1.0 gir1.2-xkl-1.0 gjs gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-contacts gnome-icon-theme-full gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session-fallback gnome-shell gnome-shell-common gnome-themes-standard indicator-applet-complete libcaribou-common libcaribou0 libclutter-1.0-0 libclutter-1.0-common libcogl-common libcogl-pango0 libcogl9 libgjs0c libmozjs185-1.0 libmutter0 libpanel-applet-4-0 mutter-common python-gmenu

to remove gnome-classic

sudo apt-get purge alacarte cups-pk-helper gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session-fallback indicator-applet-complete libpanel-applet-4-0 python-gmenu

Answer 3

If you installed using Gnome3 ppa you would better use ppa purge. it is now integral part of Ubuntu tweak. So download Ubuntu tweak and check purge ppa and there you are Also see: How do I install and use the latest version of GNOME 3?

Answer 4

Hey I had the same problem. All you have to do is go to terminal, type

sudo apt-get purge gnome

If all goes well, further type

sudo apt-get autoremove

This should completely remove all gnome related packages. Then go to appearance and restore your original theme. You may have to restart your computer. After that everything should work fine.

Answer 5

Gnome-shell started crashing after I installed some extensions from https://extensions.gnome.org/] I have done the following:

First as i saw in How to completely uninstall gnome-shell and all extensions?:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-shell-extensions-*

But this doesn't work at all. When logging on gnome tried to load those problematic extensions and the crashed again. So I tried:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-shell-*

As i saw in an answer to that thead. I decided to reinstall gnome-shell and i arrived to this actual thread. I went with

sudo apt-get remove gnome-session-fallback
sudo apt-get markauto

as Dylan McCall said. To be sure, I added what fossfreedom pointed:

sudo apt-get purge alacarte cups-pk-helper gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0 gir1.2-caribou-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0 gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-folks-0.6 gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-gdesktopenums-3.0 gir1.2-gee-1.0 gir1.2-gjsdbus-1.0 gir1.2-gkbd-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-mutter-3.0 gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0 gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gir1.2-polkit-1.0 gir1.2-telepathyglib-0.12 gir1.2-telepathylogger-0.2 gir1.2-upowerglib-1.0 gir1.2-xkl-1.0 gjs gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-contacts gnome-icon-theme-full gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session-fallback gnome-shell gnome-shell-common gnome-themes-standard indicator-applet-complete libcaribou-common libcaribou0 libclutter-1.0-0 libclutter-1.0-common libcogl-common libcogl-pango0 libcogl9 libgjs0c libmozjs185-1.0 libmutter0 libpanel-applet-4-0 mutter-common python-gmenu
sudo apt-get purge alacarte cups-pk-helper gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session-fallback indicator-applet-complete libpanel-applet-4-0 python-gmenu

And I ended with Sidharth's indication:

sudo apt-get purge gnome
sudo apt-get autoremove

When I was heading to reboot, I wasn't able to do that from the gui anymore (i was doing all thi from an xfce-session). So i rebooted from the Terminal. Now the system does not start. It says something like:

the system is running in low-graphics mode your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly.
you will need to configure these yourself.
what would you like to do?
-run in low-graphics mode for just one session
-reconfigure graphics
-troubleshoot de error exit to console login

Which of the steps messed up things? I think it would be useful to discover which, so no one else has my problem. An if you have any ideas of how to recover my system without reinstalling, it would be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Answer 6

I have never ever installed Gnome-Shell on my Ubuntu 12.04 install, and I'm sorry to tell you that the battery icon is just big and ugly when using the Faenza Icon set. It has nothing to do with installing any other shell or desktop environment. I have nothing but Unity installed on my box. If you change from the default Ubuntu icon theme, the battery icon changes in this way. Possibly to some generic pixmap icon or something. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with installing or removing any other DE or Shell.