Home / ubuntu / Questions / 391230
Accepted
GunJack
Asked: 2013-12-16 10:20:38 +0800 CST

How to remove nautilus without screwing up unity?

  • 772

I recently installed Cinnamon on my Ubuntu 12.04.1 and I loved the interface of its file manager Nemo, which I guess is also based on Nautilus. But I prefer Nemo over Nautilus and I want to remove Nautilus completely and have Nemo as my defaut File Manager.

The problem however is that removing Nautilus requires me to remove ubuntu-desktop too. Is it possible somehow to retain Ubuntu Desktop and remove Nautilus?

unity

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You don't need to remove Nautilus - just set Nemo as default - see here.

    To install Nemo, open a terminal.

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/nemo
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nemo nemo-filerolle

    If you need to install extensions for Nemo (optional)

    sudo apt-get install nemo-compare nemo-dropbox nemo-media-columns nemo-pastebin nemo-seahorse nemo-share

    To use Nemo as default File Manager, you will need dconf-tools

    sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

    To disable Nautilus from drawing the desktop item,

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false

    To Set Nemo as the default file manager (replacing Nautilus),

    xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search

    If you have removed unity, you should be able to reinstall it.

    Start your computer and login & open a terminal.

    If you can't login, enter the tty with Ctrl+Alt+F2.

    Then run:

    sudo apt-get install unity-2d
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop-2d
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl
sudo apt-get install emerald
sudo apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
sudo apt-get install git compiz-plugins-extra
sudo apt-get install compiz-plugins-extra
sudo apt-get install unity

    Then reboot - if in the tty just run:

    sudo shutdown -r now
    • 6

  2. ubuntu-desktop is a package that doesn't contain any files but just depends on other packages (that's called a "metapackage"). Unity will still work if you remove this package.

    • 3