Tweak Ubuntu the old fashioned way. Well if old fashioned is using a GUI interface (like TweakUI for Windows) instead of command line tweak, then this is it!
I got the latest release of
Ubuntu Tweak v0.2.6 and tried it out. It allows beginner users of Ubuntu who aren't familiar with tweaking manually in a terminal window and are worried they might mess something up. Its easy to make changes to their system with this tool. You can do Compiz 0.6.2 tweaking, update your startup preferences, and even make some security changes like locking down your gnome panel and printing.
Features of Ubuntu Tweak:
- View of Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
- GNOME Session Control
- Auto Start Program Control
- Show/Hide and Change Splash screen
- Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
- Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash icon or Network icon
- Tweak Metacity Window Manager’s Style and Behavior
- Compiz Fusion 0.6.2 settings, Screen Edge Settings, Window Effects Settings, Menu Effect Settins
- GNOME Panel Settings
- Nautilus Settings
- Advanced Power Management Settings
- System Security Settings
Installation Steps for Ubuntu Feisty/Gutsy/Hardy:
Open a terminal window, type the command to run geditand modify the sources.list: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
And put the following two sources in it:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu gutsy main
Then update the sources and install or upgrade Ubuntu Tweak:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak
Once you have it installed you can upgrade it by running:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
The authors website with further download packages is here
Other Tips Users have watched
Written by PCWizKid on February 25th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Contributors and GNU and Linux and feisty and hardy and open source and opensource and ubuntu gutsy gibbon and ubuntu tweak.
Thinking about installing a new operating system? Something different, stable and reliable? Maybe the Linux OS Ubuntu 7.10 or OSX
Leopard
10.5 ?
I have both OS X 10.x and Ubuntu 7.x running on separate laptops, and have used them for over 2 years now. The similarities are outstanding in more than a few ways. Below is PART 2 of my reviews and summary of main features of the latest Ubuntu 7.10 (codename Gutsy Gibbon) which have made it so appealing over Apple's OS X.
First and foremost, lets not forget that you get what you pay for, and since
Ubuntu is free compared to the OS X
Leopard, there are going to be some obvious added applications and tools in OS X which Ubuntu does not have (similar applications can be added in Ubuntu in most cases, again at no cost since there are no license fees and its open source).
My intent here is to educate the average user on their options. For the average user, installing a new operating system may seem challenging, not to mention learning its new interface and features. This is the main reason why Apple's OS X is so popular, its simplicity and features are key strengths. A PC running Ubuntu can be as easy as a Mac to use , the key is configuring it properly, there is no need to be intimidated with Ubuntu. Let me show you.
The Installation
Getting Ubuntu is easy, installing it was also a breeze ever since version 7.04. As outlined in my
PART 1 review of the
process briefly
here in my video tutorial. I recommend you download the CD Installer and create a bootable installation CD. The minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu 7.10 is 384MB of memory and 4Gigs of space (for OS X
Leopard its 512MB of memory and 9 gigs of space). What I was initially surprised of is the built in support for dual boot (OS X
Leopard has
Boot Camp) I had Windows XP already installed and Ubuntu allowed me during installation to setup partions and allocate space for the new OS to be installed keeping my Windows (XP or Vista) installation intact, and at the same time created the boot manager (aka Grub Boot Manager) which allows you to select the operating system on bootup.
One thing to note here is that you should have a network connection for Ubuntu auto update to later get
updates online. Detection of hardware was smooth on my
Lenovo T60 laptop (Dual Core PC), I did not have to get any additional drivers for my
ATI X1400 to get anything to work. The fact that Ubuntu can run on different processor platforms (x86 architecture, Pentium
TM, Celeron
TM, Athlon
TM, Sempron
TM and 64bit AMD and Intel chips) and is not setup to be proprietary to specific hardware making Ubuntu attractive to anyone with a basic Pentium chip to the most high end Quad Core PC.
The Desktop
Once you finish installation you would have also created the primary account ID and password during the setup wizard. this user ID has the permissions of a super user (Administrator access) for further configuring Ubuntu later.
The default desktop is not blue and does not look like OS X
Leopard. However it is clean, intuitive and easy to navigate. The screen shot I have here is after I configured the appearance and added a Dock to mimic
Leopard [
Click to enlarge] which shows you how flexible this operating system can be.
Details on installing the AWN Manager and
the Dock will be described in detail in
PART 3 of my review summary.
Your first instinct may be to check out the menus and
programs that come by default.
I found that there was a generous amount of standard applications and accessories. The main applications menu has the necessities such as the Open Office Suite (similar to Microsoft Office) , Evolution Mail (very similar to OS X Mail app) and Firefox (under the Internet menu option) and a generous set of multimedia utilities to play video, audio and manage your photos.
The menus are well organized and as you would expect shortcuts to be bundled under specific groups. Intuitive and straight to the point. These menus can be further configured to display more or less items as desired under the system preferences option for the main menu. Details of configuring appearance are in my
Part 3 review and desktop effects is in
PART 4 of my review.
The "Places" menu option allows you to browse your PC and / or network drives , just as the "
Finder" option in OS X does. In my case I have this PC Dual Boot with a NTFS file system for Windows and have mounted my windows drives (using the NTFS Configuration Tool) so I can access them normally (I will post a how to video on this later).
The System Preferences gives you all the access you need to tweak and configure your computer, set your preferences for not just appearance but also screen resolution, power management , get hardware information and much more. [
Click to watch the video]
Watch my video walkthrough of the workspace areaThis is where most customization can be done regarding the theme and desktop effects.
The most popular Desktop effect for Ubuntu is the 3D Cube, Expo and Desktop Plane, which allows you to have virtual desktops (Workspaces) . In OS X
Leopard this 3D Cube view does not exist, however there is the what Apple calls "
Spaces" which performs similar functions. However I did find that Ubuntu 7.10 had
many more desktop effects and eyecandy effects than Leopard
did after I enabled the Compiz "
Advanced Desktop Effects"
Ubuntu can be more than just eyecandy, use it as a secure method to connect online, worry less about viruses that plague the Windows OS, it has support for wireless and bluetooth connectivity and is not a resource hog. I find Ubuntu smooth with all the
Desktop Effects I have enabled.
Read my
PART 3 review summary of Ubuntu 7.10 vs
Leopard I will show how to configure various areas of the Ubuntu OS and where to get additional addons to spice up your experience similar to
Leopard. If your interested in learning about a few pros and cons on Ubuntu 7.10
read my previous article.
Written by PCWizKid on February 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 7.10 and Contributors and Linux and Mac and OSX and Tips and Windows Vista and Xp and boot camp and dual boot and fiesty fawn and leopard and open source and part2 and pcwizkid and tweaks and ubuntu gutsy gibbon.
An important aspect of any operating system is its support and available applications. In this portion of my review comparison with OS X Leopard, we continue where I left off in
Part 2, regarding customization.
After installing Ubuntu, the desktop is clean and ready for you to customize. All applications and tools are accessible via
the menus or command line. If your used to a GUI windows interface your most likely inclined to start
adding shortcuts (known as launchers in Ubuntu) to the desktop area and even change the way it looks. This is a important distinction to OS X, because Apple has pretty much set the interface and layout of the workspace to a more permanent look and feel (which many have no problem with). In Ubuntu you can change beyond just icons and wallpaper , almost anything can be altered with a little work, but lets start with the easy stuff first.
First View
You will notice the top and bottom panels in Ubuntu (OS X just has the 1 panel at the top) , These are the two bars that run along the top and bottom of the screen. By default, the top panel shows you the main menu bar, the date and time, and the launcher for the help system, and the bottom panel shows you the list of open windows and the workspace switcher. If you dont have a large monitor or dislike the bottom panel showing for example, these
can be removed or set to autohide, resized or moved to the side of the screen.
In OS X the Dock performs similar functions to the Ubuntu panel. The OS X Dock can also be manipulated as in Ubuntu. The only obvious difference is the Dock has a reflective 3D look with the icons which
can now be stacked and comes with
applications and widgets which you would have to get separately in Ubuntu.
So first off, if you want to make your Ubuntu experience into something more familiar you will need to get add-ons and customize a little.
In my case I decided not to mimic the Windows Vista look and went for the OS X theme and feel.
The options for changing the appearance are straight forward in Ubuntu, the only thing is, there isnt a huge
variety of themes to change into by default installed, so you will need to download the
themes and icons that you want first, then install those and then set them as the defaults for the system.
Installing things
Before you install anything make sure you have all the needed Ubuntu repositories installed. If you dont enable access to these areas you wont be able to properly get addons and updates for these. The areas I am referring to are namely universe and ubuntu-updates. This can be done in System -> Administration ->
Software Sources by enabling 'recommended updates' under the 'Updates' tab, and also enabling 'Community-maintained Open Source software' under the '
Ubuntu Software' tab. In some cases you will need to enable access to 3rd party repositories which isnt always obvious, and example of this is described in the installation for the Ubuntu AWN Dock. However, once you have enabled these you can access beyond what is available for download within the Ubuntu Add/Remove option, giving you even more addons and features.
The Add/Remove Applications option in Ubuntu is a treat. All OS's should have this. Unfortunately OS X or Windows doesnt have this ability to add both community maintained and supported apps aswell as third party apps, not just the system default ones. This saves you time having to search for programs and worrying about compatibility issues and if it will work or not. The main area Ubuntu lacks some more applications is multimedia support, so you will want to start there.
For Music management you can use
Rhythmbox , for movie playing use Totem but its recommended that you use the Add option in Ubuntu to install more mature and better multimedia applications like MPlayer or Xine for playing video files for example. Good thing you dont have to worry about iTunes and Quicktime taking over. I added under the "Other" category of Applications types the FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer so I could play back various video files such as DivX , I added the Ubuntu Restricted Extras for flash support and the
Compiz Advanced Desktop Effects support for enabling a better multimedia (and eyecandy) experience for example.
Changing Appearances
Like with anything if you want something you have to go get it yourself. I visted
SourceForge to download the
OS X Leopard theme. You will see there a Mac4Lin package to download which will later be used to replace your default Ubuntu Theme. So the goal of this OS X theme is to
look somewhat like this in the end.
However I did some changes so I could not completely look like OS X (I want the best of both worlds) and ended up
with this desktop instead.
Instructions on how to install the theme and icons are listed
here. Once you have download the package and followed the instructions all you need to do is switch the theme and icons set. Access the System Menu, then Preferences to get to the Appearance option. Select it and your almost done.
The Dock
Next you want to hide the bottom panel or move it to the side (by dragging it over), then right click on the bar to access the properties and set it to autohide for example, or just remove it.
With a free bottom portion of the screen to work with, now you need to access the addon packages for installing the Dock known as the
Avant-Window-Navigator.
I found the step by step instructions for installing it on the official Ubuntu Forums, specifically here. If you are a Mac user running Leopard you have the option on further customizing your Dock theme by installing additional ones which I found instructions for here. Other than that for Leopard there isnt any advanced customization for changing the workspace area, mostly because it works well the way it is, so in Leopard what you see is what you get.
Boot, Login and Splash Screens
In Ubuntu you can change the Bootup, Login screens and Splash screens to match your theme. Its easy as just opening up the
Login Window Preferences in System ? Administration ? Login Screen and drag and drop your theme onto the window. Confirm the dialog window that pops up to use your new theme. For the Splash screen you need to install the Splash Screen Tool from the Add/Remove option I mentioned earlier. then you can access it in System ? Preferences ?
Splash Screen. Note, ensure your images that you are replacing are PNG image format.
Once you have done the customization throughout you will be pleased of the results for sure.
Next in Part 4 of my review is enabling all the
Advanced Compiz Desktop Effects like the 3D Cube. I examine what I find stands out and compares with Leopard's features.
Written by PCWizKid on February 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 7.10 and Contributors and Linux and Mac and OSX and Tips and Windows Vista and Xp and boot camp and dual boot and fiesty fawn and leopard and open source and part2 and pcwizkid and tweaks and ubuntu gutsy gibbon.
I am utterly convinced there is something wrong with the space-time continuum and that an hour actually only lasts around 40 minutes. At the end of the day I’m left with the nagging question, where did it all go? Well, now you can find out, with a free Open Source utility called Personal Task Manager . It is a time-tracking tool and it looks just like the Windows Task Manager. It lists what you and your PC have been up to throughout the day, creating log and summary files, so you can look back over the past week and see how much time you’ve spent really working, taking lunch, or drinking cups of coffee. Come to think of it, it’s also just the job for suspicious bosses – I would check that it hasn’t already been installed on your office PC…
Tags:
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Written by Jason on February 13th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on File and Manager . It and PC and Task and Utility and computer and continuum and open source and personal task and space and windows and windows task manager.
