You can also add application buttons to the panel by pressing the Application Launcher button. Once in this window, shown in Figure D, navigate to the application you want to add and press the Add button.
Press the arrow to expand the categories to locate your application.
The Desktop
One of the first things you'll notice about the
GNOME desktop is how clean it is. If you're used to looking at a Windows XP desktop,
you expect to see My Computer, My Documents, and other icons. With GNOME, there
are no icons, but that's easy to resolve. Right-click the desktop to reveal the
only desktop menu available, shown in Figure E. Select Create Launcher
from that list.
This same menu is where you would line up your desktop icons once they are created.
Once the Create Launcher option is selected, the Create Launcher window will open. You can create three types of launchers: Application, Application In Terminal, and File. The Application is exactly what you would think it to be: a launcher to open up an application. The Application in Terminal creates a launcher for an application that must be run within a terminal session (top for example). The type File allows you to create a launcher to open a file.
Let's say you want to create a launcher for The Gimp. To do this, create a launcher with the following details:
- Type: Application
- Name: The Gimp
- Command: gimp
- Comment: Manipulate images with The GIMP
Figure F shows what this looks like in the Create Launcher window.
You could use the browse button to find the application you want to associate with your icon.
Once your icon is complete, it will appear on your desktop.
GNOME applications
There are a number of applications unique to
GNOME; one such application is the Nautilus file browser, shown in Figure G.
Although this browser is not nearly as powerful as KDE's Konqueror
browser, it does have its benefits.
It will take a while to discover all of the nifty options available with this file browser.
One of the best options available to Nautilus is the ease of burning CDs: Much like OS X's ability in iTunes, simply drop your items into the Burn folder and press the Write to Disk button. There are two ways to do this. The first -- and more troublesome -- way is to open a second instance of Nautilus. On the first instance of Nautilus, select the Go menu (from the top) and then select your CD (or DVD) burner. You will now have a Nautilus instance open for burning. Now go to the second Nautilus instance and navigate to the folders you want to burn. Drag-and-drop those folders to the other instance of Nautilus in the Burn window. Now, with a writeable CD (or DVD) in the drive, select Write To Disk to burn the disk.
There is an easier way: Open up an instance of Nautilus and open the burn window; navigate to the files you want to burn (via the tree view in the left pane); right-click the file (or folder) you want to burn and select Copy; right-click in the Burn window and select Paste; and select Write To Disk to burn the disk. You are effectively doing the same thing, but are bypassing the need to have the second instance of Nautilus open.
Here's a brief description of other GNOME packages:
- Evolution: Evolution is an amazing application. It's the Outlook of Linux.
- GNUMERIC: GNUMERIC is the GNOME spreadsheet application. It's fully featured, but not as much of a resource hog as a full office suite.
- gThumb: An outstanding thumbnail image viewer.
- gFTP: One of the best FTP clients available.
- Pan: Feature-rich newsgroup reader.
- GAIM: GNOME AOL Instant Messenger client. You can use it to communicate with friends who are running AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, and other instant messenger programs.
- Rhythmbox: Music player used to play and organise your music collection.
- GQView: Image viewing application with support for nearly every image type.
Beautifying GNOME
You probably like to customise your GUI
environment to fit your aesthetic needs. You can do this easily with GNOME, and
will have more options than a Windows user.
Select the System menu (from the Panel) and then select Preferences. From the Preferences menu, select Theme, which opens the Theme Preferences window, as shown in Figure H.
Naturally, the Ubuntu default theme is named "Human".
If you select Customise, you'll notice a number of options. The difference between Controls and Window Boarder is that Controls configures what is inside the window and Window Board configures the boarders and title bars around the window.
To install a new theme, go to the official GNOME Theme site, download a theme, and drag it into the Theme preferences window. Once the theme is installed, it will appear at the top of the list and be labelled Custom Theme. Save that theme -- and rename it -- by pressing the Save Theme button. You can then go in and customise to your heart's content.
Final thoughts
GNOME is one of the best Linux GUIs; not only is
it highly customisable, but it is amazingly stable. The widgets are stable and
fast, the applications are robust and user friendly, and configuration couldn't
be easier. So if you're using the Linux operating system, or just trying to
decide if the Linux OS desktop is for you, give GNOME a try; it just might sell
you on Linux as a viable desktop alternative.
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7%
3%
I've been a Suse/KDE user from 9.x on to 10.2
But I recently did a fresh install of 10.3 on my machine (I dual boot XP) and noticed the GNOME was now the first choice in the list of desktops.
I decided to give it a whirl, and I'm duly impressed. I highly recommend setting up the Links2Linux Packman repository and, more importantly, the VideoLan one to get the full experience.