Josh Benham The teachings of a student

15Sep/115

Installing elementary OS Luna Development Build

Today i am going to take you though the easiest way to install the development version of elementary OS Luna. Keeping in mind that Luna is still very alpha and I wouldn't suggest you install it on your main computer because to put it lightly ..... shit might break!

The easiest way as of TODAY (that i am aware of) to install elementary OS is by installing Ubuntu Oneiric Alpha 3 and going from there. At the moment I am assuming you know how to install Ubuntu so I will skip that part.

One you have installed Ubuntu we are going to update the system to have all the latest packages. Open up the terminal and type this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Upgrading Oneiric

Add in both PPA's into software sources:

# Elementary Development PPA
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementaryart/elementary-dev/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementaryart/elementary-dev/ubuntu oneiric main 

# Elementary Unstable Upstream
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementaryart/unstable-upstream/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementaryart/unstable-upstream/ubuntu oneiric main

Software Sources

Once you have done this it is now time to update the PPA's and install elementary!

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install elementary-desktop

Installing Elementary Desktop

Once this has finished restart your machine and now at the login screen we click on the dropdown and choose Pantheon instead of Ubuntu.

Pantheon Desktop

Once this has done you have finished and you can start playing around with the unstable packages of elementary Luna like so:

Elementary System

Remember that whenever you want to keep your system up-to-date with the 'unstable' packages in the PPA's we added we need to run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

I tend to run this once a day and i am getting a lot of updates because Ubuntu and elementary are so heavily under development at the moment!

If you have any questions feel free to leave them as a comment. I am not a developer or a designer of elementary just a fan of it and would still love feedback!

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  • http://profiles.google.com/niklas.s.rosenqvist Niklas Rosenqvist

    Thanks! I will be installing pantheon later today. I haven’t done it yet since I didn’t know how :)

  • http://cassidyjames.com Cassidy James

    Some extra tips:

    - Use the latest available version of Oneiric at the time (right now I believe it’s Beta 2). This will save time installing updates and will get you off on a more stable start.

    - If you want it more like elementary, you’ll want to remove a lot of the Ubuntu stuff. This includes Unity, Thunderbird, Firefox, the GNOME Games. Banshee, etc.

    - Remove appmenu-gtk and appmenu-gtk3 to kill the weird flashing menubars.

    - There’s some behind-the-scenes configuration you’ll need to do to get it even more like elementary OS. This includes:

    – Turning off all the wallpaper drawers through dconf-editor and gconf-editor (I think there are three places to turn off the GNOME and Nautilus drawers) since pantheon-wallpaper handles drawing the desktop.

    – Switching the GTK theme to elementary from within dconf- and gconf-editor. You’ll have to change it in the GNOME interface (org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme), Metacity theme (/apps/metacity/general/theme)., and maybe one other place.

    – Switching the fonts to Droid Sans, size 9. Again, multiple places inside dconf- and gconf-editor (org/gnome/desktop/interface/ and others).

    – Switch the icon theme to elementary-mono-dark in dconf-editor (org/gnome/desktop/interface/icon-theme).

    – Set your window decoration to the new elementary layout in gconf-editor (“close:maximize” in /apps/metacity/general/button_layout).

    – Set the date indicator to show day, date, and time in dconf-editor (com/canonical/indicator/datetime/). I also typically hide the calendar and show locations there.

    - Some things need to be installed from bzr to get the latest development versions (which sometimes include fixes or interface changes, like Slingshot). There are instructions for compiling/installing included with each of these:

    – Slingshot: bzr branch lp:slingshot

    – Granite: bzr branch lp:granite

    – Pantheon Wallpaper: bzr branch lp:pantheon-wallpaper

    That’s about it. Obviously, you could go on and on until it’s nearly identical to elementary OS. But the above gets it pretty stinkin’ close and it’s what I use as my preferred setup. There’s also a *lot* more that goes into making elementary (like actually packaging everything and building it package-by-package from a seed). And of course, the standard disclaimer…

    DOING ANY OF THE ABOVE VERY WELL MAY DESTROY YOUR INSTALLATION AND MURDER A KITTEN. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU MAY NOT RECEIVE SUPPORT OR HELP IF YOU FOLLOW THE ABOVE PROCEDURES. :D

    • http://joshbenham.net Josh Benham

      Thanks for the feedback. I was planning on a follow up post just need to play with elementary some more.

      I originally did a few things with gnome-tweak-tool but it does seem a tiny bit broken on my build.

  • http://cassidyjames.com Cassidy James

    Also, random tip: It’s elementary OS. The “e” is lowercase and there’s a space between “elementary” and “OS.” Just me being nitpicky… ;)

    • http://joshbenham.net Josh Benham

      Thanks for the feedback and i have gone through and cleaned up a few of those things.

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