Use Ubuntu Tweak to adjust hidden GNOME options [LWN.net]

By Forrest Cook
January 16, 2008

Ubuntu Tweak is a GNOME desktop configuration tool that works with versions 7.04 and 7.10 of the Ubuntu distribution. From the application's splash screen:

This is a tool for Ubuntu which makes it easy to change hidden system and desktop settings. Ubuntu Tweak is currently only for the GNOME Desktop Environment.

Version 0.2.4 of Ubuntu tweak was announced in December, 2007: "With many bugs fixed and two language added, the stable version of Ubuntu Tweak 0.2.4 released!"

Installation was trivial, the .deb file was downloaded in the Firefox web browser; that, in turn, allowed the installer application to be run. A minute later, the software was ready to go. The application was automatically added to the GNOME Applications/System Tools pulldown menu.

So, what can Ubuntu Tweak do? There are a number of top-level icons, some with multiple sub-icons. Top-level categories include: Computer, Startup, Desktop, System and Security. Clicking on the Computer icon reveals useful information such as the hostname, distribution version, kernel rev, platform, CPU type and speed and memory capacity. The username, home directory, shell and default language are also displayed. The Startup icon allows the user to toggle features such as the automatic saving of session changes, the logout prompt, remote TCP connections and the splash screen.

The Desktop icon allows numerous features to be adjusted on the Desktop Icon Settings, the Metacity window manager, Compiz Fusion, the GNOME panel and menu and the Nautilus file browser. The System icon has toggles and sliders for controlling various power management parameters. Lastly, the Security option has toggles for disabling the Run Application dialog, the Lock Screen, Printing, Printer Setup, Save to Disk and User Switching.

That's about all there is to this version of Ubuntu Tweak, there is room to add many more control options. Ubuntu Tweak seems like a useful tool for managing options that don't really fit anywhere else on the desktop environment. The only surprise is that this is, by name, only useful for the Ubuntu distribution. It seems as though making a multi-distribution GNOME-tweak would not require many changes to the code.

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Use Ubuntu Tweak to adjust hidden GNOME options

Posted Jan 17, 2008 20:02 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

I prefer to use the system, not wasting time tweaking it to my liking. If you regularly use half a dozen machines, "my own settings" gets seriously in the way of "get the work done".

Just 2¢

Use Ubuntu Tweak to adjust hidden GNOME options

Posted Jan 18, 2008 21:53 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Tweak it once and carry the tweaks around on a USB stick and/or at some 
URL. (Of course, if your settings storage mechanism doesn't have a 
serialized representation, this doesn't work. Guess why I like 
XEmacs. :) )

Use Ubuntu Tweak to adjust hidden GNOME options

Posted Jan 17, 2008 23:01 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

They probably did remove some functionality, but they didn't remove most of the tweaking
possiblities.

What they did do is remove a lot of options from various dialogs and such things in order to
make it easy to find the options and do the changes that 90% of anybody cares about.

There is a lot more there then meets the eye.

For example right now I can go into nautilus and do things like:
change default zoom size.
place icon labels next to labels rather then underneath them
have a tighter layout of icons then default
reverse the order of icons in new windows.
change the default size of thumbnail previews.
have it in 'browser mode' rather then 'spatial mode' by default.

For metacity I can go into it and change things like:
double click on title bar can be changed to: " 'toggle_shade', which will shade/unshade the
window, 'toggle_maximize' which will maximize/unmaximize the window, 'minimize' which will
minimize the window, and 'none' which will not do anything."

I can change the focus mode from the default 'click' to sloppy focus or mouse focus.

I can also go and change the order of the buttons at the top. I can change the position of the
menu, get rid of the menu, and move the close button to the left side rather then the right,
etc etc.

Also, for most apps, I can go in and edit all the hot keys to my liking. And not only that but
I can change most of those keyboard shortcuts on the fly.

I bet that you'd have a hard time finding a option (that you use) in KDE that I couldn't
mimmick in some way with Gnome.

How do you do all of this? Well you can just open up the trusty old gconf-editor. Nothing
special about it. Most options have comments now that explain what they do, which helps a lot
and makes it actually usable.

All this 'Ubuntu Tweak app' will do is just be a front-end to gconf. A fancier, more limited,
more userfriendly gconf editor.. essentially. It's all just XML files after all. Not a whole
lot of black magic.

There is already a set of applications that do this. There is the gtweakui package that
contains a number of small apps that do common tweaks for things like Nautilus and such.

It's not like regedit in Windows were options are spread around half-hazard way and nothing
makes sense and it's all like a black box. It's usually quite safe to open up gconf-editor and
explore the various options your favorite applications have hidden away.

Use Ubuntu Tweak to adjust hidden GNOME options

Posted Jan 19, 2008 9:43 UTC (Sat) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

I bet that you'd have a hard time finding a option (that you use) in KDE that I couldn't mimmick in some way with Gnome.

One feature that I would really like to have in Gnome is the ability to raise_or_lower a window in response to an input sequence that involves a mouseclick. In other words, I would like to be able to (for example) alt-rightclick on a window and have the window be raised above all other windows if it is not already, or else lowered below all other windows. In gconf-editor this action corresponds to apps/metacity/window_keybindings/raise_or_lower but the problem here is that I can only bind it to a keyboard sequence, when what I really want is to bind it to a mouse click.

Binding raise_or_lower to a mouse click combo is easy in KDE (Desktop, Window Behavior, Window Actions in kcontrol). If you know a way to do this in Gnome, I would really like to know!

Tweak and gconf are not the answer

Posted Feb 8, 2008 20:53 UTC (Fri) by stup (subscriber, #43043) [Link]

I think you missed the point of the OP -- KDE just has these options for you in a nice
"Configure" dialogue box but in gnome you need tools like gconf or ubuntu tweak to find and
then fiddle with the settings.

I get tired of people complaining about "bloat" in KDE when it's just features that *they*
don't use (but others do). And I similarly get tired of people complaining about having too
many configuration options in KDE apps when gnome users so often say "well just use gconf to
do this and that".

It seems to me that things like ubuntu tweak (or gconf, regedit, windows powertoys uitweak and
any other incarnation of this) are a kludge for writing a decent interface to the options that
are available.