Why can't I update to Gnome 3.22 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS?

Question

I can install Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS or I can Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Unity based) add the Gnome 3 PPA and Gnome 3 Staging PPA, install gnome-shell, uninstall unity desktop, and I have now Ubuntu with Gnome 3.20 desktop.

Now, the question is, why i can't update to gnome 3.22 in 16.04 LTS? Yes I know that many gtk/gnome based packages are patched for Unity but, If I install ubuntu gnome or add the PPAs, all this patches are gone, because you don't need this in gnome-shell.

Yes, I know that i can update ubuntu to 16.10 for this, but why is not possible update the desktop side without update the whole install? i will use HWE for have updated the kernel and X. And I try to not have an almost rolling release style of works.

Solution

Because the package maintainers aren't prepared to do the work of preparing all the packages for each gnome release for 16.04. (It's a lot of boring mostly thankless work)

Sadly, the Ubuntu Gnome distribution doesn't release at a later time than Ubuntu Unity distribution. (Huge fail in my opinion.)

I wish there were PPAs for Gnome releases and we could select whichever gnome release PPA we want (maintained by the gnome group).

Would you all be willing to make financial contribution towards the packaging of Gnome 3.22 for 16.04? If enough of us got together financially, perhaps we could get them to do the work.

Comments

[xangua]

Contact the Gnome staging repositoty maintainers.

[Admin]

Exactly as above. The PPA does not provide the version you're looking for. Perhaps you should have checked that before going on a rant.

[Rinzwind]

" If enough of us got together financially, perhaps we could get them to do the work." Nope. There is a lot more other work that has priority over this that would benefit from financial contributions :-)