Do more with Elementary
Digging deeper to solve problems is a worthwhile endeavour…
We’ve hopefully given you a decent overview of the basics of Elementary OS, and shown a bit of how Linux in general works. Elementary perhaps goes further than any other distro to be completely usable without resorting to the command line. This makes it ideal for beginners, but it also hides a lot of functionality.
For example, there are some great things in the AppCentre, but they represent only a tiny fraction of what’s available in the Ubuntu repositories. If they all were visible in the same layout, no one in their right mind would scroll all the way to the end, so we see only a curated selection. If you really want to see the whole package selection in a graphical application, then install
Synaptic: it will show you the truth about packages in all their incomprehensibly named glory. But there’s more to life than checking out Ubuntu’s massive package, selection. You may have searched hither and yon for an option to move the Close button from the left, or perhaps enable the Minimise button. These and other seemingly immutable elementaryisms can be made malleable through the elementary Tweaks tool, which you won’t find in the AppCentre.
Elementary, Dear Watson
One of the joys of open source software is that you can take someone else’s code, tweak it slightly compile it yourself and package it for your distribution. One of the troubles is that this process can be frustrating and time-consuming, and often needs to be repeated whenever the tool or any of its dependencies are updated.
Ubuntu introduced the idea of Personal Package Archives (PPAs), which enable developers to host their own packages without having to undergo the stringent checks required to get them into the official repos. Users can choose to add a particular PPA, and thus sidestep all the hair-pulling traditionally associated with rolling your own packages. The only caveat is that you trust the PPA, since anyone could set one up and host all kinds of nasties. So be wary of adding these without doing some research first.
Fire up the Terminal application again and pass it this series of commands: sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip.scott/elementary-tweaks sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks
Now open up System Settings, and lo and behold you’ll find a new Tweaks applet, where window controls and other things can be rejigged to your heart’s content.
As a reward for sticking with this feature to the end, we’ll leave you with some tips to further your gaming experience with Steam. We hope you’ve enjoyed it, and that you enjoy Elementary OS. Follow the Elementary team’s blog at https://medium.com/elementaryos and send Jonni your Elementary questions at lxf.answers@futurenet.com.