How to upgrade your shell

Important note

It is not advised to proceed. Packages in the Gnome3-staging PPA are mainly for testing purposes. It is always recommended to stick to the version provided with the current release of Ubuntu. The packages in the Gnome3 PPA are considered stable and safe when used alone.

Packages from these archives should be removed using ppa-purge prior to an upgrade to a greater version of the OS, such as moving from 14.04 to 14.10 and so on!

Check your version

Open up a terminal window
type in gnome-shell --version

For more information on what is included in the latest GNOME release visit The GNOME Foundation's release notes page.

Add the PPAs and update

before adding the PPAs, please make sure your system is fully up-to-date by running sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -f in a Terminal window
then, in the same Terminal window run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

(you can copy these commands one by one and paste them in order in a Terminal window with CTRL+Shift+V)

Reboot and enjoy

After everything's done you have to reboot your computer in order for the changes to take effect.

Just to be perfectly safe

Note, that the software updater only disables PPAs and doesn't remove actual packages, what can cause issues with upgrades if you are using gnome3-staging, so make sure you run ppa-purge before an upgrade to a greater version of Ubuntu.

How to revert back

As mentioned above, packages in the Gnome3 and Staging PPAs are intended for experienced users only. Should you run into critical bugs and other issues with these packages, you can always remove them and restore the original packages. This process is called purging.

Restore Gnome Shell

if you haven't already, you need to install a package called ppa-purge by running sudo apt install ppa-purge in a Terminal window
then, in the same Terminal window run:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop^

The latter ubuntu-gnome-desktop package is important to add to ensure all packages are re-installed correctly.