Ubuntu Tips (beta)

Gnome terminal supports "profiles", which are collections of settings that affect the behavior and appearance of the terminal. These profiles can be used to greatly enhance your terminal experience.

The default Ubuntu desktop is configured with two "panels", one each at the top and bottom of the desktop. These panels contain various "applets" such as the system menu, the clock, the logout button, or the list of open applications (what Windows calls the taskbar). Fortunately, unlike Windows, the desktop's panels can be fully customized. This tip describes some of the common operations you might perform to customize the appearance and functionality of your desktop panels.

The "Applications" menu, located by default at the top left corner of the screen, is one of the most often accessed menu's on an Ubuntu system. This menu can be customized by right-clicking on "Applications", and choosing "Edit Menus" in the resulting popup. This will start a small utility to edit the structure of the menu. This can be used, for example, to bring your favorite apps to the top-level of the menu.

While many users like the default look of the Ubuntu desktop, part of the fun of using Linux is its infinite customizability. This tip illustrates how to navigate the Gnome Desktop configuration to change the colors use by your applications.

The Ubuntu desktop comes preloaded with a fantastic note-taking application called Tomboy.

While the application can be easily accessed from the desktop Applications menu (under the Accessories sub-menu), it can me cumbersome to have to remember to launch this application each time a desktop session is started.

Fortunately, the tomboy application can be added to the desktop panel in a convenient form. Just right click on an empty area of the panel, and choose Add To Panel. In the resulting window, under the Accessories section, find and double click the Tomboy Notes. Now you should have a little notepad icon in your desktop panel. Click on this icon to access all your notes instantly, or to create new notes.

Using this method will also ensure that the Tomboy application gets added to your panel on every startup, ensuring that you'll always have quick access to your notes.

The user interface for moving and resizing windows under Ubuntu is essentially the same as that found on Windows. You can click and drag the titlebar of any window to move it, and you can click and drag the "handles" of any window to resize it.

Ubuntu goes one step further, however. If you hold down the "Alt" key on the keyboard, then clicking and dragging anywhere inside a window will allow you to move it. And clicking and dragging using the middle mouse button (pressing in the scroll wheel for most mice with scroll wheels) will allow you to resize. Using these quick shortcuts can make window management much easier as they don't require you to target very small areas on the screen to begin your mouse drag.

Ubuntu's default desktop configuration provides for a large space to add custom elements to the desktop panels found at the top and bottom of the screen. One of the most useful items to place in these panels are shortcut buttons to commonly used applications and commands. This tip illustrates how to add a button to launch a custom command, i.e. one that is not already defined in the Applications menu.

The desktop "panels" located at the top and bottom of a default Ubuntu desktop are configured to expand to the entire width of the screen. In some situations, this can mean that they consume more space than needed. This tip shows how to configure these panels to only take up as much space as is required by their contents.

Unlike Windows, under Ubuntu, any visible window can be set to have an "always on top" state. Just right anywhere in the window's titlebar (the upper most portion) and click "Always on Top" in the menu that appears.

Many of never use the Caps Lock key, and lament the fact that such prime keyboard real estate is wasted by a useless key. This tip illustrates how to configure your gnome desktop so that the Caps Lock key acts like a third Ctrl key.