Ubuntu

Desktop Art is a handy plugin that, once enabled, allows you to display on your GNOME desktop, the cover of the track being played. Similarly, a simple overflight allows multiple playback controls (pause, next track or previous). And as is customary under Linux, many configuration options are offered to you.

Here is a selection of home screen themes (GDM) that should delight you. Make good use, it’s beautiful, it’s fun and it’s free!

Under Linux Ubuntu, the user can really let his imagination run free to create the desktop of his dreams. Themes, icons, dock to the Mac OS X, connection screen... in short so many things to customise for fun. Let’s look in this tutorial on customising the login screen, commonly called GNOME Display Manager (GDM).

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that is easy to use. However, to make it even more accessible to as many people as possible, there is software to configure and customise its system with ever more ease. His name? Ubuntu Tweak!

For quite a while, I've been looking for a way to get the same menu system that we find on Macs: a menu bar common to all applications that is not located in the open application window but in the top dashboard. Global Menu allows such customisation!

The proprietary Microsoft fonts that are the very famous Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman and others are not available native to Linux Ubuntu. However, there is a simple way to get them in order to use them as if you were under a Windows system.

If you use Ubuntu as a dual-boot with Windows Vista, you will notice that NTFS partitions are not directly accessible when you log on, but you need to open them first and enter the password to mount them. However, there is a simple method to automate this process without going through the command line!

Depending on the type of screen and the resolution used, font characters do not show very sharpness. That’s why you need to change some settings to ensure that all the different texts displayed on your monitor are of good visual quality — especially in Mozilla Firefox. Let’s see how to proceed together.

Now that your graphics card is correctly recognised, why not take advantage of the latest graphics effects made available to us under Linux Ubuntu? Some options are most useless, but others bring real gains in ergonomics. 3D cube, window transparency, etc. all of these effects are based on Compiz, a default built-in application in Ubuntu. It remains to be seen how to access the various configuration settings — not available by default.

Backing up your entire hard drive is not a small deal. In English, we talk about making a ghost in other words of creating a disk image of your partitions — system in particular. Once created, this backup will allow us to restore the system in the event of a crash allowing us to return to a stable state without going through a complete reformatting of the PC. This is a very useful solution that we will implement with Clonezilla, a free downloadable Linux Live CD.

Want to play DVDs, listen to your WMAs or even AAC files? Although these are proprietary formats, Ubuntu is still able to read them without any problems. However, it is necessary to know the proper handling to obtain all the different packs of codecs needed for most audio and video files.