View source for GNOME

In March of 2010, I finally moved from my venerable XFCE4 + Xfwm setup to a glitzy GNOME + Compiz desktop. The experiment is largely successful thus far.
==Disabling gnome-shell==
gnome-shell, from what I can tell, is launched as part of the session definition file (/usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop). You can copy this to gnome-fallback.session in $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/gnome-session/sessions and run gnome-session out of .xsession without arguments, or (probably better) provide the --session argument to gnome-session and keep the modified file somewhere personal.
==Screenlets==
* The terminology is apparently "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_engine Widget Engine]"?
* Anyway, I like [http://www.screenlets.org/index.php/Home screenlets.org]...for now. gDesklets?
** It's said to be a [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314575 dead project]...
** I like the [http://www.screenlets.org/index.php/WaterMark WaterMark] screenlet
==Compiz==
* Get compiz running via <tt>compiz --replace</tt>.
** Add this to GNOME's startup applications to make it your default window manager
** Better than this command in your .xinitrc/.xsession is changing the "Window Manager" element of GNOME's Session-RequiredElements registry key.
* Enable Alt+Tab window switching via the "Application Switcher" plugin
** I don't like the zooming effect; scale it to 0x
* Enable Super+Tab folded window switching via the "Shift Switcher" plugin
** Has some conflicts with "Application Switcher" by default; I disable all but "Next Window", "Previous Window" and "Initiate"
** Be sure the "Text" rendering plugin is enabled to get window titles
* Enable desktop backgrounds with the "Wallpaper" plugin
** You'll want disable Nautilus's attempt to manage the background: use gconf-editor and unset apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop
** Note that this will disable your desktop icons.
* Enable Ctrl+Alt+arrow virtual desktop switching via the "Rotate Cube" plugin
* "Trailfocus" handles general transparency
** Set "Window to Start Fading" to 1
** Change opacity levels of unfocused and focused windows to 60 and 95, respectively
* Cube: I use
** transparency on rotate (requires that Compiz draw wallpaper)
** Spherical deformation on rotate
** Inside-the-cube view
* App Switcher
** Maximize "Speed"
** Minimize "Timestep"
** Enable "Mipmap", "Bring to Front", "Icon", "Minimized", and "Auto-Rotate"
** Reduce "Opacity" to 10
===Other Plugins===
* I like the "animations" plugin
* The "Window Titles" plugin is useful in conjunction with [[OpenSSH|SSH]] forwarding
* Go ahead and use "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicubic_interpolation Bicubic Filtering]" if you've got the horsepower
===Keybindings===
* "General Options" -&gt; "Key Bindings":
** Toggle vertical maximize: Ctrl+Up
** Toggle horizontal maximize: Ctrl+Right
** Disable everything else save "Close Window" (Alt+F4), "Window Menu" (Alt+space)
* "Commands"
** <tt>/usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator</tt>: Alt+F1
** <tt>/usr/bin/x-www-browser</tt>: Alt+F3

==Nautilus==
* Video thumbnailing requires <tt>totem-video-thumbnailer</tt>, part of the <tt>totem</tt> package
** You'll also likely need raise the limit on thumbnailable media files; I thumbnail any local file < 1G
==GNOME Panel==
* Users of taskbars (the "Window Selector" applet) will want to look into Compiz's "Window Preview" plugin
* Transparency can be had regardless of the GTK theme if using compiz's "Opacity, Brightness and Saturation" plugin
** Add an opacity rule (I use a value of 50): "<tt>(class=Gnome-panel) & !(type=PopupMenu | Dialog)</tt>"
* I use avant-window-navigator now
==GNOME Control Center==
* Ensure hinting and subpixel ordering is optimized via a trip to the [http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ Lagom LCD Test] page
* Don't set wallpaper here if Compiz is handling it
==See Also==
* [[Xorg hell|Xorg]] page