Desktops Tweak your Gnome.........
Nate Drake shows you how to customise your Gnome desktop running on your favourite distro, to suit your everyday needs.
Nate Drake shows you how to customise your Gnome desktop running on your favourite distro to suit your needs.
For those you that have recently installed Ubuntu 17.10, you’ll be graced with the new-look Gnome Shell. This is the graphical part of the desktop environment. If you’re new to Linux then you may be surprised to find that the panel is at the top of the screen. There’s a menu launcher at the top left, a dock containing applications on the left and various settings icons and a clock in the top bar.
Despite the Gnome project’s emphasis on simplicity, the desktop actually has a huge number of features, each of which can be fine-tuned to suit your needs. This lies at the very heart of the Linux experience and is why there are so many different ‘flavours’ of the OS available.
Wonderwalls
When setting up Ubuntu, your first port of call should be to customise your desktop background. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Change Background. Gnome will then ask if you wish to change the wallpaper for the desktop itself (Background) or Lock Screen. Click the first option for now to scroll through the various default backgrounds available for Gnome. Select your desired one and then click Select at the top right to switch.
If you prefer to substitute your own background, click the Pictures tab at the top of the Settings window. The files in your Pictures folder will be listed there. Click to highlight your chosen picture and then choose Select, just as you would for the default wallpaper. However, if you find the whole idea of snazzy wallpapers too distracting click the Colours tab at the top of the screen. From here you can choose a solid colour to serve as your desktop background.
Configuring the Dock
By default, the dock is on the left-hand side of the screen and contains the icons for any running apps, as well as those you’ve pinned by adding to your favourites (right-click an icon to do this). If you’ve already changed the desktop background in settings, click Dock to configure options there. Click the rocker switch to auto-hide the dock when it comes into contact with other windows.
You can also use the slider to change the icon size from the default (48). Use the ‘Position on screen’ drop-down menu to alter the position of the dock on screen, for instance to the bottom.
Enhancing with Extensions
Extensions (previously known as applets and widgets) are ways to enhance your Gnome Shell desktop. One such extension is Desk Changer, which supports cycling through various desktop wallpapers at set intervals, something which Gnome Shell can’t do out of the box.
Visit https://extensions.gnome.org using Firefox to browse the various ways you can enhance your desktop. Follow the steps in the tutorial ( seethelastpage) to start using extensions. While following the steps here, you can visit https://extensions.gnome.org/local at any time to browse extensions that you’ve already installed. Click the rocker switch next to an extension from on to off to disable it. You can also enable and disable extensions using the GnomeTweakTool (covered next).
Making Tweaks
For those new to using Ubuntu 17.10 you may have noticed that the default desktop only contains the wastebasket icon. The GnomeTweaksTool is a powerful program that enables you to make a number of changes to your desktop interface, including adding more icons to your general clutter. To install it, launch Software from the dock and search for Gnome Tweaks in the search bar. Then click Install. Once the tool is downloaded click Launch.
There are a number of configuration options here and we encourage you to explore them in your time. For now, click Desktop. Mark the checkbox next to any icons you need, such as the Home folder or Network Servers. Return to the Tweaks menu and choose Extensions. This contains a small number
of the extensions that are known to work with your system. The Ubuntu Appindicator Support Extension is designed specially for the OS and enables application indicators such as system updates to appear in the top bar. From here you can also deactivate any extensions you previously installed via https://extensions.gnome.org.
Wonderful Workspaces
Gnome 3 makes it possible to manage running windows by managing various workspaces on your screen. These are equivalent to multiple desktops. You can see an overview of currently open workspaces by clicking the Activities launcher, then selecting it on the right-hand side. Any running applications are displayed at the centre of the screen. Click these to launch.
Similarly, you can click a particular workspace and then on an application to place it there. This can be a little tricky to navigate at first, but with time you’ll see that this is actually a very efficient way to manage your desktop. There are also some tricks that you can employ to make using workspaces easier and more intuitive.
Because you’ll likely be working with multiple workspaces, consider installing Workspaceindicator from the Gnome Extensions website. This places a number at the top right of each workspace, so you can easily switch between them. For instance you might decide that Workspace 1 is for personal use, Workspace 2 is for business and so on. You can also click the workspace number to switch between them. There’s also an extension named AutoMoveWindows. Use this to make sure that certain applications always open on a particular workspace – for instance, the spreadsheet program LibreOfficeCalc could always be sent to Workspace 2, which you’ve dedicated to business matters.
Relaunch the GnomeTweakTool and go to Extensions to alter the settings for this and other add-ons. Click the Settings icon next to an extension to make changes such as
to add a rule about which applications should be opened in which workspace.
By default, Gnome will create a new workspace each time you launch an app in a previously empty one. The desktop is designed to be efficient so this shouldn’t weigh down your system resources too much. But if you find this hard to navigate, select the Workspaces category in GnomeTweaks, then change Workspace Creation from Dynamic to Static. From here you can also set the Number of Workspaces.
Raising the bar
The latest version of Ubuntu includes Gnome Shell 3.26, which supports a translucent top bar out of the box. Select Top Bar from the GnomeTweaks menu to add the date and time in seconds to the clock. Laptop users can also see the percentage of battery they have remaining.
Other extensions such as System Monitor can display useful information from within the top bar. See the System Monitor boxout ( onthepreviouspage) for more information.
If you’re coming to Ubuntu as a previous user of KDE or Windows 7, you may prefer to dispense with the Top Bar altogether. If you followed the steps in the tutorial to enable Gnome Shell Extensions, you can add Hide Top Bar which will keep it invisible while other windows are maximised to make better use of the space available on your desktop.
Alternatively, extensions such as DashtoPanel can combine your dock and top bar into a panel at the bottom of your screen, which may feel more familiar.
Working with Windows
All programs native to Gnome use Gtk+. This is a graphical toolkit that governs how applications are displayed. For a taste of what Ubuntu can do in this regard, reopen the Gnome Tweaks Tool and choose Appearance. Click the drop-down menu marked Applications to change from the default Ambiance theme to one of the pre-installed alternatives such as High Contrast.
If your appetite for snazzy windows has been whetted, close the GnomeTweaksTool, then open your browser and head over to Gnome Look ( www.gnome-look.org). Click GTK3 Themes on the left-hand side. If you find a theme you like, scroll down the page to the Files section, where you should be able to download them in a compressed format such as .ZIP. Once this is done, go to your Downloads folder, right-click the file and choose Extract Here. The theme will appear in its own folder.
Next, you need to create a folder to store your themes. Open your home folder, right-click inside the window and choose to create a New Folder named .themes. Adding the full stop before the filename tells the system that the folder is hidden. This means it’ll appear to vanish just after you create it. Press Ctrl+H to reveal it. Copy the folder containing your chosen GTK Theme into .themes, then press Ctrl+H again to hide it. Relaunch the GnomeTweaksTool and click the Appearance section once again. If your chosen Applications theme is compatible with Ubuntu 17.10, you’ll now be able to select it in the drop-down menu.
Gnome Shell themes
While installing GTK+ themes enables you to change the appearance of applications, Gnome Shell themes can be used to change the overall appearance of your desktop. You can install these in isolation, or in addition to extensions, window, icon and cursor themes.
To get started visit https://extensions.gnome.org/ extension/19/user-themes and install the UserThemes
Gnome extension. This enables you to store Gnome Shell themes in the .themes directory you created earlier in your home folder. Next, use your browser to visit www.gnome
look.org and choose Gnome Shell Themes. Make sure to read the description carefully because there may be icons or cursor packs that go with it. See the Fun with Icons box ( belowleft) for help with this. Once you’ve downloaded the compressed Theme file, extract it to the .themes directory in your home folder, just as you did previously for the GTK+ files.
Close the GnomeTweaksTool if necessary, then open it once again. Click Appearance. Use the Shell drop-down menu to select your chosen theme. If the developers have suggested a particular GTK+ theme to use too, install it and choose it from the Applications menu. If you’re in need of inspiration, head back to the Gnome Look website. For instance, the machine in the image below uses the Flat Remix Dark Gnome Shell theme and icon pack as well as the equally sombre Deepin-dark GTK+ Theme.
Overtweaked
Adding extensions or new themes to your desktop doesn’t change the core operating system in itself, so customising your desktop is fairly risk free. That said, if you do install any poorly coded extensions or themes, they may slow down your system or cause it to crash, so make sure to make a full backup of your work before customising Gnome further.
The System Monitor extension is useful for a quick glance at how your PC’s resources are divided, it isn’t very detailed. If you have multiple processors and drives and need detailed information on speeds, temperatures and so on, consider installing Conky. This handy app ( seeTutorials LXF204) displays a basic text readout of all your key system attributes in a corner of your screen. To get started, open Terminal and run sudo apt-get get install conky-all to install Conky then run conky & to launch it. Conky can use a number of different icons and themes, which you can find under the Gnome Other category on the Gnome Look website.
Devoted readers may have noticed that all the steps in this guide involve interacting with and installing desktop items to your home folder. This means that any themes, icons, extensions or cursors won’t affect other users on your machine. This leaves other people in your home or workplace free to set up their own workspace as they see fit.
If you’ve found that the new Gnome interface is simply not for you, considering using one of the many other flavours of Ubuntu such as Kubuntu which uses KDE, or Lubuntu which uses a custom version of the fast and lightweight LXDE desktop environment. You can download these as a DVD ISO, but you can install just the desktop environment from the Ubuntu Software app, then choose it from the login screen. You can find more information about this from the Ubuntu Forums official thread on supported desktop environments at https://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=329.