How do I get a vanilla GNOME after Ubuntu 17.04?

Question

Some people (me) would prefer the straight GNOME experience as opposed to the Unity style desktop offered in Ubuntu 17.10.

How can I get the standard GNOME desktop and interface?

Answer 1

There are two methods to easily gain a more GNOME like experience in Ubuntu 17.10.

The first method is to run the program

sudo apt install gnome-session

This will undo many of the features that have been added to GNOME, such as the always-on dock, but will leave the Ubuntu color scheme.

The second method is to execute the command

sudo apt install vanilla-gnome-desktop

This will install the GNOME themes as expected from prior versions of Ubuntu GNOME, change the Plymouth splash screens, and install several common GNOME utilities.

Answer 2

If you want full GNOME, you can install it by using:

sudo apt install gnome

This package installs around 293 packages/utilities and on the other hand vanilla-gnome-desktop package installs around 170 packages/utilities which in my opinion aren't required just to experience Vanilla GNOME. You can install a 'minimal' version of vanilla GNOME which need only 4 new packages using:

sudo apt install ubuntu-gnome-desktop

It doesn't include additional packages (which many of times are useless) and GNOME plymouth but you can experience vanilla GNOME without using much space.