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A question stemming from question Ubuntu 18.04 slow gnome after 2019 update: virus?: Is it possible to downgrade gnome-shell? I am advised to downgrade in Ubuntu 18.04 from gnome-shell version 3.28.3 (April 25 2019) to 3.28.1. Is there a safe recipe for this?

Kulfy
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Rob Rutten
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2 Answers2

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The version string for gnome-shell 3.28.1 is 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 which is still available in repository/pool. To downgrade run,

sudo apt install gnome-shell-common=3.28.1-0ubuntu2 gnome-shell=3.28.1-0ubuntu2

These won't be automatically upgraded unless done explicitly.

Kulfy
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    Will that fly w/o deleting the installed one? – Rinzwind May 08 '19 at 08:21
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    @Rinzwind Yeah, just tested on a virtual machine that is fully updated. [Output](https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Kc8MpqJtCB/) with warnings of being downgraded for your reference. – Kulfy May 08 '19 at 08:35
  • @Kulfy: thanks! But the downgrade did not repair my slowness-after-update problem. How do I go back to 3.28.3 and automatic upgrade? – Rob Rutten May 09 '19 at 11:50
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    @RobRutten You download deb from Ubuntu packages and install that using dpkg – Kulfy May 15 '19 at 12:13
  • more interestingly, how do I get all possible downgradable version numbers? – Polv May 12 '21 at 13:24
  • @Polv `apt-cache policy gnome-shell-common gnome-shell` would show available versions from currently configured repositories/PPA. – Kulfy May 15 '21 at 13:48
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One should be careful that no packages are removed. The answer posted by Kulfy does not include gnome-shell-extension-prefs, so it ends up removing that as well as gnome-tweaks. The proper command in Ubuntu 20.04 is:

sudo apt install gnome-shell=3.36.1-5ubuntu1 gnome-shell-common=3.36.1-5ubuntu1 gnome-shell-extension-prefs=3.36.1-5ubuntu1
Nmath
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Fmstrat
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