The default desktop environment for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Unity. While Unity itself is great, some might prefer the old GNOME 2.8.x desktop environment.
In Natty Narwhal, GNOME 2 is installed by default. To login to GNOME 2 session instead of Unity, follow these steps;
KDE 4.2 has been released, but till now it’s still not being included in Ubuntu’s main repository. This makes the Ubuntu / Kubuntu users to get stuck with KDE 4.1, probably until Jaunty Jackalope is released this April.
There are however a solution as some nice people has actually compiled the KDE 4.2 packages and creates a repository for it.
To install KDE 4.2, you’ll need to add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list. The easiest way to to that is to run the following command from the console;
$ echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/project-neon/ubuntu intrepid main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
You’ll then need to add the GPG key and update your packages cache by running the following commands;
$ gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 493B3065 && gpg --export -a 493B3065 | sudo apt-key add - $ sudo apt-get update
Your system will now update all your KDE 4 installation to the latest version when you run the following command;
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
and if you’re a Ubuntu user who doesn’t have KDE 4 installed and want to try a full KDE 4.2 experience, install the Kubuntu Desktop with the following command;
$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
From now you’ll be able to log in to KDE 4.2 session from your GDM.
