Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering
There are variety of desktops
available in Ubuntu; GNOME, KDE, Xfce. In this article, we primarily focus on
the GNOME desktop. However, once you are familiar with GNOME, it would be easy
for you to tackle other desktop environments.
1.
Changing the position of windows
control-buttons
In Ubuntu 10.10, the windows
control button - minimize, maximize and close – appear on the top left of the
screen by default. If you don’t feel comfortable with this setting, you can
switch them to the top right – their old position. Here are the steps:
·
Run the application window by pressing ALT-F2
and type gconf-editor in the
text box. Finally choose Run to fire the configuration
editor.
·
Browse to /apps/metacity/general – using the side pan. Finally, double click on button_layout.
·
Change the position of the colon such that it appears on the right side
of the pan. The colon position determines whether control buttons appear on the
left or right side of the window. Click OK to complete the process.
2. Customizing desktop panels
Panel is an area of desktop
through which you interact with the system e.g. running an application, to
see/set time & date etc. Ubuntu comes with two desktop panels – the bottom
and the top panel. The top panel consists of icons for launching applications,
clock applet, volume control, menu bar and notification area. The bottom panel
consists of show desktop icon, workspace switching applet and window list.
Their functions are self explanatory. For instance, show desktop icon can be
used to minimize all running applications thereby exposing the desktop to the
user. Here are few tips to configure these panels.
- To change the side of a panel, click on the vacant area in the panel, press and hold ALT button and drag the panel to a desired location. You can also change the properties of a panel e.g. autohide, orientation, size etc. by right clicking on a vacant area and choosing Properties from the drop down menu. You can also add new panel to desktop / delete existing by right clicking and choosing New Panel / Delete This Panel.
- Interacting with the panel objects is also simple. Left click on the object launches the application, middle click is used to drag the object to a new location and right click will open the panel object menu. For adding a new object to the panel, right click on a vacant area of the panel and choose Add to Panel. You can also remove, change properties, lock or move a panel object by right clicking on it and using the drop down menu. Locked objects do not leave their locations until unlocked.
3.
Configuring the main menu
The main menu – on the top bar -
consists of three submenus; Applications,
Places and System. As the names suggest, Applications
menu is used to run installed packages, Places
contains short-cuts to different file locations on your system an System consists of utilities to
customize system or perform other administrative tasks e.g. create users.
Whenever you install a new package, it is automatically added to a suitable
category which you can locate later on e.g. Internet,
sound and video etc.
4. Configuring the visual effects
The desktop in Ubuntu can be made
look attractive by changing the visual effects e.g 3D desktop capabilities,
shadow effects, translucent windows, animations etc. Visual effects are enabled
by default but they may be disabled if your display adaptor does not support
them. Here is how you can configure these visual effects.
·
To configure visual effects, click on System, Preferences, Appearance
and then Visual Effects. There are
three basic options.
i.
None – for
simple desktop
ii.
Normal
iii.
Extra – to
please your aesthetic sense
Changes will
take few seconds and screen may get unstable during this time. Be patient and
enjoy your coffee till it asks you to “Keep
Settings” or “Use Previous Settings”.
If you continue to enjoy coffee and did not respond in 20 seconds, it will
revert back to the previous settings.
Morale of the story: Bring another cup of
coffee for the next round.
·
For more advanced effects, you need to install
advanced desktop setting utility. If you have it, invoke it by clicking on System – Preferences - .
i.
To enable an effect, check the box adjacent to it.
ii.
For changing the current settings, click on the effect
Warning: If you notice any problem with your screen or
get an error message e.g. visual effects can not be enabled, we recommend you
to revert back to None. Your PC may
also get slow due to visual effects – because after all - they do waste the
precious computing resources. So, do not play with your PC if it is aged. We all need to respect the elders.
5. Configuring through preference tools
System - Preferences menu allows you to configure several other
features of GNOME desktop. Keyboard
shortcuts menu enables you to set combinations of different keys for
different actions. Through the Windows
configuration menu, you can set different window features e.g. window roll,
window movement key etc. Mouse and Keyboard are the tools used to configure
mouse and keyboard. System – Preferences
–Appearance contains tools to handle several configuration tasks related
to: themes, background, fonts, interfaces and visual effects. Please
visit http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/prefs.html
for more detailed explanation.
Editor's Note: Dr. Muhammad Saleem has done PhD from the Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, Islamabad, Pakistan. He spends his spare time writing as a freelance writer. He is also the author/co-author of several research publications in the area of Ad Hoc networks
The article above does not reflect the opinions, observations and recommendations of Dannybuntu.com and are the views of the author. Always confirm information before you do something with your computer.
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