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 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.

Some fonts look better when they are rendered without font smoothing. This tip illustrates how to write a .fonts.conf configuration file so that only particular fonts are rendered without antialiasing.

Users migrating to Ubuntu might from Windows might wonder why there is no equivalent of the "Run" entry in the default Gnome desktop menu, especially given that Linux is supposed to be so command-oriented.

The Gnome desktop actually does have an equivalent application launching window, however it is not offered in the standard menu. Instead, it is accessed by the keyboard short cut Alt + F2. Pressing this key combination will pop up the "Run Application" window, in which the user can type a command as if it were being typed on the terminal command line.

For quick tasks, this can be much faster that opening up a terminal to run a single command.

As of recent Ubuntu release, the Gnome desktop's file manager, Nautilus, has the ability to browse all sorts of remote file systems. This tip illustrates how to create a "launcher" on the desktop to automatically open a Nautilus window containing a remote location.

To create such a launcher on the desktop:

1. Right click on an empty area of the desktop background.
2. Under Type, choose Location
3. In the Location field, type the URL for your remote location. For a remote system accessed using ssh, for example, type ssh://username@host:/path/to/files

Thanks to ian for sending this one in.