Chapter 3. The GNOME Desktop / 3.2. The Desktop | ||||
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 | Chapter 3. The GNOME Desktop | 3.3. Settings |  | |
Chapter 3. The GNOME Desktop / 3.2. The Desktop | ||||
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| Chapter 3. The GNOME Desktop | 3.3. Settings | | |
The most important elements of the GNOME desktop are the icons on the desktop, the panels at the top and bottom border of the screen, and the panel menus. The mouse is your most important tool although GNOME has builtin support for assistive technologies, such as braille, speech synthesizers and on-screen keyboards to support handicapped users. For details on these technologies refer to Section 3.6, “Assistive Technology Support”.
A pristine GNOME desktop features at least the following desktop icons providing basic navigation and functionalities of your system:
Anything you want to delete can be dropped onto the desktop icon. As long as you do not empty the trash can, these items are not deleted permanently and can still be restored.
The desktop icon provides easy access to your private data.
The desktop icon can be used to quickly access any device attached to your computer. This includes hard drives and partitions as well as digital cameras or USB flash drives.
Right-clicking an icon displays a menu offering file operations, like copying, cutting, or renaming. Selecting from the menu displays a configuration dialog. The title of an icon as well as the icon itself can be changed with . The tab provides access to the access, read, and write permission settings for this file for the user, the group, or others. The tab offers the management of comments. The menu for the trash can additionally features the option. This deletes its contents.
To remove an icon from the desktop, simply move it into the trash can. However, be careful with this option—if you throw folder icons or file icons into the trash can, the actual data is deleted. If the icons only represent links to a file or to a directory, only the links are deleted.
To create a link on the desktop to a folder or a file, access the object in question with Nautilus. Right-click the object and select . Drag the link from the Nautilus window and drop it on the desktop.
Right-clicking a free spot on the desktop displays a menu with various options. Select to create a new folder. Create a launcher icon for an application with . Provide the name of the application and the command for starting it then choose an icon to represent it. The order and the alignment of desktop icons is controlled via and . It is also possible to change the desktop background or to reset it to its default setting. If you need a command line environment, click .
On first login, the GNOME desktop starts up with two panels located at the top and the bottom of the screen. The upper panel holds the three panel menus (, , and ) a quick launch area providing application buttons for the most important programs, a system tray holding applet icons, and a notification area with the system clock and the volume control are located.
The bottom panel contains the window icons of all started applications in the taskbar. If you click the name of a window in the taskbar, it is moved to the foreground. If the program is already in the foreground, a mouse click minimizes it. Clicking a minimized application reopens the respective window.
Beside the taskbar, the provides access to additional work areas. These virtual desktops provide extra space in which to arrange open applications and windows. For example, put an editor on one workspace, some shells on another, and your e-mail application and web browser on a third. Move windows between workspaces by just dragging their icon in the workspace switcher from one workspace to another.
If you right-click an empty spot in the panel, a menu opens, offering help, information, and commands for GNOME and panels. Select to open a configuration dialog in which to change the position and background of the panel. If desired, add launchers, tools, and various applets to the existing panels with . Remove panel elements by right-clicking the respective icons and selecting . A new panel can be added with .
The Applications menu provides a very flat and easily accessible hierarchy of the applications installed on your system. Most of them are grouped into smaller submenus each of them dedicated to a category like , , , and so on. To start any application, just click on to unfold the complete menu. Then seelect a suitable category, unfold the submenu and click the application's name.
Applications not in the menu can still be started via the prompt (Alt-F2), if you know their command line call. If you, for example wished to browse your digital photographs and could not find gThumb in the menu, you would enter gthumb at the prompt.
The menu provides easy access to common locations such as the user's home, drives, desktop and network folders. A search function for recent documents and a file search can also be launched via this menu. For more information on file management of local and remote folders, refer to Section 3.4.2, “File Management”.
The menu contains the basic controls to manage your desktop. Here you find the and switches as well as an easy-to-use function to take a screenshot of your desktop. The screenshot function can alternatively be accessed just by pressing the Print Screen key (also known as PrtSc).
Applets are neat little applications that are nested in the panel by means of a small icon. As in contrast to a “real” application they do not have their own window on screen. Some applets are already pre-configured to be in your panel on first start, but there are many more to be discovered and added to your own custom panel.
Adding a panel applet is very simple, just right-click on the panel to open the dialog (see Figure 3.1, “Adding a new Icon to the Panel”), scroll down until you find what you needed, select the item and click . A new applet will then be permanently added to the panel.
