The Unity desktop environment was created by Canonical and once used as the default GUI for Ubuntu releases. It was later abandoned by Canonical and taken over by other maintainers. It remains available for installation today on the latest releases of Ubuntu, including Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. The objective of this tutorial is to install the Unity Desktop as an alternative desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Desktop/Server Linux.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Unity Desktop
- How to switch to Lightdm display manager
- How to login to Unity desktop
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
| Software | Unity Desktop |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Unity Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 installation step by step instructions
You can download Ubuntu 22.04 dedicated desktop flavours? This way Ubuntu provides users with an alternative desktop experience distinct to the default GNOME Ubuntu Dekstop.
- Open a command line terminal and execute the following two
aptcommands to begin the Unity desktop installation:$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop
Unity Desktop installation command on Ubuntu 22.04 - During the installation process, a prompt will appear in your terminal that asks you to select your default display manager. You will need to select
lightdmat this prompt in order to load into the Unity desktop by default in the future.
Use TAB to select lightdm and hit OK button - Once the Unity Desktop Installation is complete, restart your system.
$ reboot
- When your Ubuntu 22.04 system boots back up, you can load into the Unity desktop environment.
Select Unity desktop environment to log in to
That’s all there is to it. Now you can enjoy the Unity GUI on your Ubuntu 22.04 system.
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, you saw how to install the Unity desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. Unity relies on the applications that are already on your PC, and does not install a slew of its own, as most other desktop environments do. It is a fluid and lightweight desktop environment that some users prefer over the default GNOME GUI.