Mint 12 Tips & Tricks Guide (updated Jan 10)

[borfo]

If you want to disable the auto-maximize and window tiling behaviour that happens when you drag a window to the top or side edges of the screen, you can do this:

gconf-editor

/ > desktop > gnome > shell > windows > uncheck "edge tiling"

Then logout, log back in.


Also, DockbarX is really great.
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/09/dockbarx ... eable.html

[bimsebasse]

Also going in - keep them coming

[Middy]

That's a good tweak, Middy, gonna put that in if it's OK.

Can see you're also enjoying the new zukini theme

Definitely OK

Haha, nice call on the theme. I really like it!

[axel668]

Thanks for this really great guide, makes Mint even more pleasurable to use
Would be a real feature though if the TOC entries were clickable ... Gnome3 will not go away,
so maybe would be worth moving this over to the WIKI ? You could still post updates in the thread ...

Cheers, A.

[bimsebasse]

There's a wiki?

[Oscar799]

WIKI?
For Mint ?
No
It was repeatedly spammed and vandalised so it was taken down over 2 years ago

[bimsebasse]

just one more tweak please ...

the size of the icons in the Menu (alacarte) ...

i want to *increase* the size of the icons on the left ... the vertical box.

i went through the css for the menu but didn't see any reference to icon size ...

Missed this one!
You can see in this theme screenschot: http://lgsalvati.deviantart.com/gallery ... 0#/d4eb6sk
... that it can be done, but haven't fiddled it with myself yet - download that theme and compare the .css to see if you can find the part that determines favourites bar icon size,

[Major Grubert]

About 2l :

You can change in .css font-size to 6pt or 7pt

Code: Select all

.app-well-app > .overview-icon,
.remove-favorite > .overview-icon,
.search-result-content > .overview-icon,
#overview .journal-item {
    border-radius: 4px;
    padding: 6px;
    font-size: 7pt; /* was 8pt */
    color: white;
    transition-duration: 200;
    text-align: center;
    text-shadow: black 0px 1px 2px;
    border: 0px; 
}

[Major Grubert]

You can change the position of the dock (from dock extension) :

Code: Select all

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dock position left

or in dconf-editor navigue to org/gnome/shell/extensions/dock and put left instead of right in field position

[aelfinn]

To increase the size of the notification area icons, which seem to me to be way too small: in gnome-shell.css locate the “.system-status-icon” value and change “icon-size” to, for example, 16px.

[cocorocara]

Thanx for the prompt reply! Finally I could fix that really tiny font!

CC

hmmm ... now that the top and bottom panel fonts are fixed, i find that the fonts elsewhwere are still tiny. For example the drop down menus from the panels such as Calendar, the system settings, etc.

If only the keyboard shortcuts would work in MATE, I will switch to it immediately. This fiddling and tweaking is really not my cup of tea ...

[bimsebasse]

It's all in the theme css file. But yes it would be nice with a GUI to handle these things - with all the shell users out there it can't be too long before we see either an expanded gnome tweak tool or a new program to tweak shell appearance. If Ubuntu had gone gnome shell instead of Unity, there probably would be at least one now.

You could also simply change theme to one with larger fonts, Mint-Z (and the Zukitwo theme it's based on) has smaller font than what is the norm for themes.

[DrHu]

Great tips!...

And to control system startup programs, I use rcconf, easier to look through list than have to edit each one separately..
--but there are others available, such as bum or sysv-rc-conf; they may be more or less complicated looking
http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/2007/09/30 ... asily.html

[RedCell989]

Thanks for the bleachbit tip! 2.3GB recovered from useless stuff!

[bimsebasse]

Yes it's surprising how much useless fluff a standard linux OS actually has, and always feels good to run bleachbit the first time on a fresh install and see how much goes

[gfreeau]

Remove icon from application title:

This removes the icon from the application title in gnome 3.

1. Go to your shell themes directory

2. Open gnome-shell.css and find .panel-button #appMenuIcon

If your theme has multiple css files like mine (Faience)
grep -r 'appMenuIcon' *
To find which file it is in. (panel.css in my case)

Find

Code: Select all

.panel-button #appMenuIcon {
    app-icon-bottom-clip: 1px;
}

Change width and height to 0px;

Code: Select all

.panel-button #appMenuIcon {
    app-icon-bottom-clip: 1px;
    width: 0px;
    height: 0px;
}

Find

Code: Select all

.app-menu-icon {
    width: 24px;
    height: 24px;
}

Change too:

Code: Select all

.app-menu-icon {
    /*width: 24px;
    height: 24px;*/
}

Save, restart gnome.

Looks like this: http://www.keleko.com/images/gnome-application-icon.jpg

[gazzaf]

I don't know if anyone else would be interested in this, but after a little fiddling I discovered how to disable the display desktop icon/button.



Open usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/windowlist@linuxmint.com and edit the extension.js - Comment out line 715

well i am interested but as a newbie that java dont look the same as i've got. Any suggestions ?

[anti_user]

excellent job sir!
thanks!

[Major Grubert]

New extension usefull to extend Window List when it is in top panel : https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/ ... -left-box/

[z06gal]

Those who have the weather extension, are you having any trouble setting it for the center of the panel? Mine stays on the right for some reason. I have it set for center but evidently it prefers the right side. Lol