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Gnome

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GNOME

Gnome.png

For GNOME 3, the GNOME Project has started from scratch and created a completely new, modern desktop designed for today's users and technologies. In GNOME 3:

  • There is a new default modern visual theme and font
  • The Activities view which provides an easy way to access all your windows and applications
  • Built-in (integrated) messaging desktop services
  • A more subtle notifications system and a more discrete panel
  • A fast Activities search feature
  • A new System Settings application
  • ... and more features like: window tiling (Aero Snap like), an improved Nautilus etc.

[more details on the GNOME3 website]

Introduction

Gnome desktop-capture.png

GNOME3 comes with two interfaces, gnome-shell (the new, standard layout) and fallback mode. gnome-session will automatically detect if your computer is capable of running gnome-shell and will start fallback mode if not.

Fallback mode is very similar to the GNOME 2.x layout (while using gnome-panel and metacity, instead of gnome-shell and Mutter).

If you are on fallback mode you can still change the window manager with your preferred one.


Installation

Install Gnome :

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S gnome


Uninstalling :

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -Rc gnome


This will remove all packages depending on gnome.


Using the shell

See https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

See the list of GNOME Shell Extensions.

Customization

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman -S gnome-tweak-tool


This tool can customize fonts, themes and some other useful settings like action when lid is closed. Currently the gnome-control-center cannot be access from GNOME Shell menu. So try running from terminal instead.

Changing the GTK3 theme using settings.ini

Similar to ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for GTK2+ it is possible to set the GTK3 (Gnome 3) theme via ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. By default ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} is interpreted as ~/.config.

Only Adwaita theme exists in this moment for gtk3 and is available in gnome-themes-standard package.

Example:

 [Settings]
 gtk-theme-name = Adwaita
 gtk-fallback-icon-theme = gnome
 gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme = true # applicable only if selected theme supports it

It may be necessary to restart one's DE or WM for the settings to be applied.

Note: More options can be find there: GtkSettings documentation

Start program automatically after login to GNOME 3

You can specify which programs to start automatically after login using the gnome-session-properties tool, which is a part of the gnome-session package.

User terminal 48px.png
$ gnome-session-properties

Removing folders from the "Computer" section in Nautilus's Places sidebar

The displayed folders are specified in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and can be altered with any editor. An execution of xdg-user-dirs-update will change them again, thus it may be advisable to set the file permissions to read-only.

Setting the default terminal via console

gsettings, which replaces gconftool-2 in Gnome 3, is used to set e. g. the default terminal manually. The setting is relevant for nautilus-open-terminal.

The commands for urxvt run as daemon:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec urxvtc
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec-arg "'-e'"

Setting Nautilus to Use Location Bar Entry

If you want to enter path locations manually in Nautilus you can press ctrl+l. To make this persistent you can use gsettings.

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true

Enabling fallback mode

Your session will automatically start in fallback mode if gnome-shell is not present. If you want to enable it while having gnome-shell installed, open gnome-control-center. Open System Info > Graphics. Change Forced Fallback Mode to ON.

Enabling hidden features

Gnome 3.0 hides a lot of useful options and you have to use dconf-editor to customize them.

Font Rendering

org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings

antialiasing: rgba hinting: slight

Gnome-panel applets =

Alt is the new context trigger event, it needs to be used in fallback mode to add/move/remove applets

Turning off the sound

$ GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.sound event-sounds false

Changing Hotkeys

In dconf-editor, enable org.gnome.desktop.interface "can-change-accels".

An example of changing the delete hotkey: Open nautilus, select any file/directory, then click "Edit" from the menubar, and hover over the "Move to Trash" menuitem. While hovering, push delete. The accel should change from "ctrl+del" to "del".

Make sure you have selected a file, else the "Move to Trash" menuitem will be greyed out. You should disable "can-change-accels" afterwards, to prevent accidental accel changes.

How to shutdown through the Status menu

For now, the Shutdown option seems to be hidden if the user presses the Status menu on the upper right. If you want to shutdown your system through the Status menu, click on it and then press the Alt button. The "Suspend" option will instantly turn into "Power off...", as long as you are pressing the Alt button, which will allow you to properly shutdown your system.

You can also install the "Alternative Status Menu" extension (see the section on Enabling Extensions, below). This will put a permanent "Power Off" option in the Status menu below the usual suspend option.

Enabling extensions

Gnome Shell can be customised to an extent with extensions that have been written by others. These provide functionality like having a dock that is always present, and being able to change the shell theme. More details on the functionality of currently available extensions is given here You can use the gnome-shell-extensions package to install them. Restart Gnome to enable them.

If installing the extensions causes Gnome to stop working then you must remove the user-theme extension and and the auto-move-windows extension from their installation directory (could be in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions or /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions or /usr/local/share/gnome-shell/extensions). Removing or adding extensions to these directories will remove or install them form the system. More details on Gnome Shell extensions are available here.


Post Installation

Using bluetooth

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S obex-data-server


NetworkManager

Root terminal 48px.png
# systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
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