How to install Pantheon without messing up GNOME

Solution 1:

I'm sharing my experience with installing pantheon desktop on top of Ubuntu Budgie 19.04. Ubuntu's main GNOME edition should work similarly.

First, add these two ppas ppa:elementary-os/stable and ppa:elementary-os/os-patches.

When you install the first ppa with this command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/stable, it will create the repository source file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d. Edit that file to change the distro name from disco (19.04) to bionic. Then re-run sudo apt update

After installing both ppas, add Ubuntu 18.04's main repository source line. You can edit /etc/apt/sources.list file or edit one of the elementary's source file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory. Add this line (or any other bionic mirror of your choice)

# ubuntu bionic repo for some packages
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main

Then run these

sudo apt update
sudo apt install elementary-desktop

Bonus tips

Add elementary's appcenter's source to get some more elementary apps.

In /etc/apt/sources.list.d/appcenter.list, add these

deb http://packages.elementary.io/appcenter bionic main
# deb-src http://packages.elementary.io/appcenter bionic main

Then refresh the package index and open appcenter to find curated elementary apps