Install pantheon desktop on Ubuntu 15.10?

Question

Pantheon desktop doesn't install on recent versions of Ubuntu, but is there a way to install it now?

Are there any workarounds?

Answer 1

Sure, I'm running it right now, and it's working pretty well mostly. There are two major problems that I'm experiencing that are deal breakers for me. Both problems affect only applications that are not eOS applications, such as firefox. When you start one of these applications, and right click on the icon in the dock, and click "keep in dock", it doesn't work. The bigger problem is that the titlebars for non eOS applications are completely broken. The close button does not work, nor does the minimize or maximize button.

Here's what I did to install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/daily
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/os-patches
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/testing
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mpstark/elementary-tweaks-daily

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install elementary-theme elementary-icon-theme elementary-default-settings elementary-desktop

You can then download the source for elementary-tweaks and compile it locally.
If you use make install, the .so installs in the wrong place. By default, it installs in /usr/local/lib/switchboard. You'll want to move it to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/switchboard.
After that, elementary-teaks works quite well.