Ubuntu: Gnome Hints Tweaks and Tips

From Indie IT Wiki

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

  1. Press Alt+F2 then type gconf-editor and hit enter
  2. In gconf-editor, navigate to apps > nautilus > desktop
  3. On the right side look for the entry called: trash_icon_visible
  4. 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

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