Now that you know a bit more about how to get around GNOME, you will surely want to make it look the way you want it to, that is add (or remove) icons, change the background, and so on. First, let's start by adding an icon linking a directory to our desktop.
To add such a launcher to your desktop, use the Desktop Background menu, that is, right-click anywhere on the desktop away from icons or panels and select the option. A window will pop up in which you must fill in the relevant information. For a directory, as in our example, remember to select the Directory type. Also, choose an icon by clicking on the box next to the Icon label.
You can fully configure your panel: add or remove objects, change the panel size, color, or button appearance, and more. For a comprehensive description of these options, we refer you to the Working With Panels guide (which you can access by right-clicking on the panel and choosing the Help option).
Here are some of the most useful operations:
To remove an object from the panel, right-click on it and choose .
To add an application launcher button to the panel, right-click on the panel and browse through the many sub-sections of the Add to Panel section. When you find the applet you wish to add, simply click on it.
To add an applet, logout button, or other object to the panel, proceed as described above.
To move a panel object, drag it to the new location with the middle mouse button.
To move the whole panel to a different side of the screen, drag it with the left mouse button.
To customize your panel, right-click on it and choose Properties[3]. This window will pop up:
You will be able to select the panel's position and size, enable Autohide and Show hide buttons options, as well as add arrows to your panel. They enable to hide the panel on one side or the other by retracting it. The Background tab essentially allows you to choose a different background type, by letting you change its color or even adding a background image.
To show some of the most useful buttons and applets you can place on the GNOME Panel, we list below the ones we feel will most interest you. You can easily add these and other buttons to your panel, or remove unneeded objects as described in the section called “Configuring the Panel”.
The button allows you to quit your session, either because you are leaving work, to let other users use the computer, etc. Clicking on it will prompt you for confirmation and ask you if you want to save the changes you have made to your session. Selecting this option will save the current state of your session (i.e. the list of applications you currently have running and their state) so that next time you log in, GNOME will start the same applications for you and you can continue your work. After you click on , GNOME will close all your applications and the computer will return to the log-in screen.
The button allows you to lock your screen while you are away from your computer. To unlock the screen, you must enter your password. This helps to avoid the unpleasant surprise of finding someone has read your documents or messed up your files while you were away.
The Keyboard Layout Switcher enables you to switch your keyboard to one of many available layouts, covering languages from Azerbaijani to Vietnamese. If you are trilingual, you can easily select, for example, French, English and Spanish as your main keyboard languages. The flag (Québec in our screen shot) represents the language you are currently using. Simply click on the icon to change your keyboard's language. To add or modify it, right-click on the icon and choose Preferences.
Please note that currently, the keyboard switcher will only work correctly if the language you have chosen uses the same character set as your default language (the one you selected during installation or during login). For example, if your default language is English, you can use French or Spanish keyboards but you won't be able to use Russian or Greek ones. Thus, if you need to type in Russian, you will need not only to select the Russian keyboard but also switch your default language (locale) to Russian. You can do this by running localedrake on the command line.
The System Monitor applet indicates your processor's load state. If you see it skyrocket and get all blue, it means one or many of your applications is going crazy...
To insert this applet on your panel, right-click on the panel and choose + -> .
This enables you to separate your work as if you had many desks (in fact, workspace switchers are also called “virtual desktops”, see the section called “Virtual Desktops”). For example, you could place all of your Internet-related applications in the first workspace, your word processor and spreadsheet in the second, your multimedia software in the third, etc. There are 4 default workspaces, but you can have as many as you like. However, this feature can be resource-intensive (that is overtax your processor and/or memory). Hence, we suggest you use a maximum of 8, which should be quite enough for most purposes.
To display the workspace properties dialog, right-click on the workspace switcher, and choose in the pop-up menu.
[3] You might be unable to right-click on the panel since the Window List takes up the whole space... Simply click on the Window List's left border and drag it to the right: then, you will have enough room to right-click and access the Properties option.