Saturday, April 21, 2012

How to customize fedora 16 and make it functional


-->

Presumption

Installed distro is Fedora 16 with Gnome 3 desktop environment.

Adding close and minimize buttons to windows

$ yum install gconf-editor

run it after installation by clicking on ALT+F2 then write “gconf-editor ” and hit enter.

in the Configuration Editor navigate to desktop --> gnome --> shell --> windows
Find “button_layout” and click on it and change it to ":minimize,maximize,close" .
logoff and logon again OR ALT+F2 then write “r ” and hit enter.

Show desktop icons and right clicks

 $ yum install dconf-editor 

Go to org --> gnome --> desktop --> background and check the box to show desktop icons. 

While this brings back desktop icons, and enables right clicking on the desktop, it makes the computer, home, trash icons visible. These are usually hidden with Ubuntu. To make them hidden again, but still allowing icons on the desktop, go to nautilus --> desktop, and uncheck the boxes for the icons you want hidden. 

Taskbar & dock

$ yum install docky # if you like dock-like taskbar
$ yum install tint2 # if you like classical taskbar
$ yum install gnome-panel # if you like the gnome original panel

to run and test them, ALT+F2 then write the name of program you want to run.

Personally i would recommend the gnome-panel for stability reasons, to add it to every system start up, ALT+F2 then write “gnome-session-properties” and hit enter, put name, lets say “gnome panel”, command “gnome-panel --replace”, and comment “ start up gnome-panel” then click add.

Hide all windows

usually, fedora user was hiding all menu by clicking ALT+CTRL+D, i like windows way to hide them (because it is uses less keys) which is WinKey (Or Super)+D.

To make it functional, hit WinKey and write "keyboard" --> "shortcuts" -->navigation --> "hide all normal windows " then set the shortcut you like.

Customizing the icons, fonts & theme

$ yum install gnome-tweak-tool

Then run it by hitting ALT+F2 then write “gnome-tweak-tool ” and having happy customization!
I like default xfce icons which is rodent icon set . I didn't find away to install it independently so i went to install the xfce desktop environment.

$ yum install xfce4-icon-theme

ALT+F2 then write “r ” and hit enter, after making any changes.

Fonts

the fonts "Tahoma" and "Calibri" are pretty enough with many languages support , they can be installed from windows directory. 

Gnome shell extensions

to install most of gnome extensions 

$ yum install gnome-shell-extension* 

the gnome-tweak-tool can be used for extensions customization.

Codeblocks

$ yum install codeblocks # for codeblocks
$ yum install codeblocks-contrib #for most plugins 

System monitoring gadget

"gkrellm" is nice and does the job 

$ yum install gkrellm 

To download transparent theme

To install the theme
Untar it on /home/<user_name>/.gkrellm2/themes

No comments:

Post a Comment