Can I install just the Unity desktop on top of another distro? [closed]

Solution 1:

I'm wondering whether it is possible to take any distro other than Ubuntu (and its derivatives) and put Unity/Ubuntu-HUD on top of it, just like you would for instance install LXDE onto any distro that came with a different desktop that you didn't like?

Yes, just install Unity not the full ubuntu-desktop meta package.

I have done apt-get install ubuntu-desktop on my machine running Bodhi Linux, but practically got it transformed into Ubuntu, that install pulling all of the Ubuntu apps automatically.

Because you basically installed the default configuration for Ubuntu. For example, Installing lxdeis not the same as Installing lubuntu-desktop.

What I wanted though was to use only the applications I had, in a different GUI. Is this possible, and if yes, how?

Just install unity with the suffix --no-install-recommends

Solution 2:

Bodhi Linux is just Ubuntu with another desktop (E17). It's a derivative just as Xubuntu or Lubuntu. So in your case you could just install the unity package.

If you want to install Unity on a distribution that is not Ubuntu, you run into problems. Unity needs changes in some Gnome libraries, that Gnome refused to accept. So these changes didn't make it into other distributions.

There are effords to offer Unity for OpenSuse and Fedora (google it), but they obviously have to also offer the Gnome libraries which is a bad idea in the first place (i.e. using a 3rd party repository that changes core libs).