Have you installed Gnome 3 from ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 because you were tired of Unity or just because you wanted to test the new shell and this has broken your login? Are you now on the login screen but no graphic environment will ever work?
Then you have to remove gnome 3 following the steps below:
- Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to access the terminal window and log in. At the prompt type following commands:
- sudo apt-get remove libgtk-3-common
- sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
- sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
- sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
- sudo apt-get install gnome-panel
- sudo apt-get install lightdm
- sudo shutdown –r now
The pc will reboot and you should be able to use Unity/Classic login again.
05/04/2013 *UPDATE* (thank you Anthony)!:
If after the reboot the machine is not booting in Unity or Gnome3 and it’s just loading the terminal, maybe you’ll have to reconfigure lightdm to be the default login manager:
- sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
You will see a window similar to this one (where you should then choose “lightdm”)
Good luck!
ASR Search Engine
New Ubuntu is coming…
Thanks mate Unity was driving me insane on my work desktop but Gnome 3 wouldn’t login in so time to swallow my pride and switch back to unity until I have time to switch to mint.
By: Anthony Mills on 2 June, 2011
at 6:03 am
Or just use Ubuntu Classic…
By: Stefano Prenna on 2 June, 2011
at 1:56 pm
hey! after sudo apt-get remove it gives an error of unmet dependencies
even after sudo apt-get -f install the error continues
By: tuhina jain on 9 June, 2011
at 3:38 pm
Maybe you have installed something else that is conflicting with the package you are trying to remove (I guess libgtk-3-common). Basically the system is telling you that if you remove that package, other software will not work anymore as it requires that package to work.
Try to install apt-rdepends by typing:
sudo apt-get install apt-rdepends
then you can execute it:
sudo apt-rdepends -r libgtk-3-common
(change libgtk-3-common for the package you are receving the error)
You will see a list of dependencies and probably you’ll be able to identify which software is causing the issue.
By: Stefano Prenna on 9 June, 2011
at 6:34 pm
thank god for these instructions, I tried removing all the updated packages, but nothing… thanks again
By: Russell on 28 June, 2011
at 9:51 am
Thanks alot for the explainnig
By: LinuEver on 23 March, 2012
at 8:11 pm
I did these accordingly. After It restarted it showed checking battery state. And it was like that didn’t go anywhere. I checked on forums for solutions somebody said it was display drivers, but I installed nvidia drivers instead of AMD now the screen is blank I can’t get to log in screen. Now am pissed off with ubuntu. This the third time my laptop is crashing, neva had this problems with windows. Any help will be deeply appreciated thanks in advance.
By: ikp4success on 14 April, 2012
at 3:50 pm
Most of the times a blank screen without the chance of reaching the login screen is drivers related.This can be rectified by using a mode similar to what you may know as “safe mode” in Windows.The first thing you need to look at is which graphic adapter do your computer have. If you don’t have this information, just check your pc manual or search its brand and model online for the specifications. At that point we will be able to understand which driver has to be installed and you’ll recover the login screen and all the functionalities of your Ubuntu…
By: Stefano Prenna on 15 April, 2012
at 7:08 am
Ok same thing happened to me… I have an amd vision…. And it’s stuck at te battery check thing and that stuff
By: Josue on 20 May, 2012
at 1:50 am
I did these accordingly. After It restarted it showed checking battery state. And it was like that didn’t go anywhere. I checked on forums for solutions somebody said it was display drivers, but I installed nvidia drivers instead of AMD now the screen is blank I can’t get to log in screen. Now am pissed off with ubuntu. This the third time my laptop is crashing, neva had this problems with windows. Any help will be deeply appreciated thanks in advance.3
By: ikp4success on 14 April, 2012
at 3:52 pm
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By: Ubuntu 12.04 – Black Screen after Gnome Uninstall | MoVn - Linux Ubuntu Center on 10 May, 2012
at 9:52 am
Tried above insructions and can’t login ubuntu, now I am trying to rescue through command line >:-(
By: Anthony on 3 April, 2013
at 6:09 pm
Couple of checks:1. Which version of Ubuntu are you using?2. Are you sure you haven’t previously removed Unity?3. Have you got error messages while removing Gnome3?
By: Stefano Prenna on 3 April, 2013
at 8:29 pm
I have ubuntu 11.10 64bit on dell xps 15, I had not previously removed Unity. I figured out that I had somehow had my display manager set to gdm, which was the root of my problem. It didn’t login (couldn’t load gui, it was stucked at ubuntu logo) because couldn’t start gdm. I fixed it by reconfiguring the display manager to ligntdm instead of gdm and then restart. after restart login was successful and later reinstalled the packages that have lost, (eventually i had a backup). I would suggest anyone is going to remove gnome 3, firstly keep a backap of all of his/her packages installed, and be sure that display manager is reconfigured to lightdm.
By: Anthony on 4 April, 2013
at 1:17 am
Good points Anthony, thank you for your feedback. I’ve updated the post as it will probably help more people
By: Stefano Prenna on 5 April, 2013
at 9:07 am
After purging I was missing several packages until running
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
this did the trick should anyone find themselves in a similar situation
By: Iain Hamilton (@TheIainHamilton) on 25 April, 2013
at 4:45 pm
should also add that this may be down to 13.04′s actual release resulting in the dist-upgrade no longer working.
By: Iain Hamilton (@TheIainHamilton) on 25 April, 2013
at 4:47 pm
You really make it appear so easy together
with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually one thing which I
believe I would never understand. It sort of feels too
complicated and extremely vast for me. I am having a look forward for your subsequent put up,
I’ll try to get the cling of it!
By: Stephen Pizzuti on 15 May, 2013
at 12:21 pm