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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Very, VERY new



Jcpayne
October 16th, 2012, 05:51 AM
Hello,

Can someone please point me towards a very beginner thread in buffing up my desktop environment. I am extremely new to Ubuntu, and am excited to learn about it, though I need to start with the basics. I have managed to download gnome, and I can log in using that environment, but I don't see any huge difference between the two. What kinds of things can I do? How can install widgets like cpu usage, temp, weather, etc. I'd like to make my desktop look nice.

Any direction is appreciated

zombifier25
October 16th, 2012, 07:09 AM
Desktop customization is not exactly a process, it involves a lot of stuffs. There are some things you can do, such as changing themes (GTK themes, Metacity themes, icon themes). Firstly, install MyUnity to be able to change themes and does more things to customize your desktop.

gnome-look.org has a lot of themes you can download. Extract downloaded themes to ~/.themes or /usr/share/themes, and icon themes to ~/.icons or /usr/share/icons . Then change the theme via MyUnity.

For CPU widget, etc. you can either install and use screenlets (the easy, but less customizable) or conky (more customizable, but very hard to set up)

For more info, visit these threads:

The Desktop Thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2065175). This thread is for showing off your desktop, and you can get help if one certain desktop catches your eye (note that every month a new desktop thread shows up, the link I gave is for October.

Conky thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=281865). For Conky examples and help with Conky.

dim459
October 16th, 2012, 07:18 PM
Well, if you are interested in heavily customizing your desktop and using a lot of widgets, I guess KDE would be a better choise than gnome.