Ubuntu: Gnome Hints Tweaks and Tips
In a terminal example anything shown in bold after Terminal:~$ is a comment and is not to be run, e.g:
Terminal:~$ sudo apt-get install fish Then scratch your ear
So in the above Then scratch your ear is not to be run in the terminal
Gnome Desktop: How To Remove The Trash Icon
- Press Alt+F2 then type gconf-editor and hit enter
- In gconf-editor, navigate to apps > nautilus > desktop
- On the right side look for the entry called: trash_icon_visible
- Untick the box and that’s it!
Gnome Panel Top & Bottom Panels Missing At Start Up: How To Restore
If you lose the panels that by default are at the top and bottom of the screen housing such things as menus clock and open programmes, try the following:
Linux Terminal:~$ gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel pkill gnome-panel
Restart the system and all being well you should have back the Gnome panels, they will however be reset to the original system settings.
This fix was found here after much hunting, so many thanks to the author.
There is a handy little script available to backup your panel settings which can be found here.
Gnome Reset To Defaults
rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .mendacity
Gnome Terminal Tricks
You can set the size of the window and the title and the software it runs, like this...
gnome-terminal --title="Battery" --geometry="50x5" --command "watch acpi -b"
GRUB2 Boot Menu: How To Edit
The quickest way to edit the GRUB2 menu is to use startupmanager, to install in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install startupmanager
After installation the menu entry can be found under 'System --> Administration --> Startup Manager'
For details on manually editing GRUB2 see the Ubuntu page here
Login Sound: How To Disable
Method One
Linux Terminal:~$ sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds --type bool false
Method Two
System --> Preferences --> Startup Applications --> Startup Programs (tab)
Locate and untick 'GNOME Login Sound' entry.
Root User - Set Password & Allow Login Via GDM: How To
Unlike many other Linux distributions Ubuntu does not by default come with a Root (super user) account.
Linux Terminal:~$ sudo -i sudo passwd root nano /etc/gdm/gdm.conf-custom
Add the lines:
[security] AllowRoot=true
Save changes (CTRL+o) press enter, then exit (CTRL+x)
Note: If the file you open is completely blank add the [security] line as well.
Close the terminal and restart system