“In this chapter from the ExtremeTech book ‘Hacking Ubuntu: Serious Hacks Mods and Customizations’ you’ll learn how to set up the operating system to your taste with things like changing the startup music, the background, fonts, icons, and colors, and navigating the Nautilus file manager – on both PCs and Macs.” The book was written for an older version of Ubuntu but it still largely applies for Feisty Fawn too.
Making Ubuntu Usable
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
48 Comments
2007-05-08 8:56 am
2007-05-08 8:31 am
Googol
making it USABLE = changing start-up tune and background, yeah, right.. whaevva. now I got a pretty complete picture of what they are doing over there all day 
J, I got to work instead, that’s terrible
2007-05-08 9:25 am
2007-05-08 11:02 am
2007-05-08 11:31 am
2007-05-08 11:47 am
2007-05-08 12:17 pm
2007-05-08 1:11 pm
2007-05-08 2:49 pm
2007-05-08 5:59 pm
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2007-05-08 8:27 pm
2007-05-08 7:32 pm
2007-05-08 8:47 pm
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2007-05-09 1:15 am
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2007-05-09 1:56 am
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2007-05-09 12:57 pm
2007-05-10 6:00 pm
2007-05-10 6:49 pm
i always kill the startup musik on any os
I don’t.
PS. C’mon! Mod me up!
Edited 2007-05-07 23:55
never mind mod me down to -5 i don’t fck care you smegheads
Edited 2007-05-08 00:17
I do.
Do.
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do!
…another Ubuntu article. Yay.
Wow! Ubuntu has a long hard road ahead if after installing it you have to make it “usable.”
The linux neophytes haven’t got a chance now! 🙂
Hey, if you have to make any system usable why not just install Slackware and tweak to your heart’s content? At least the system will be more secure, more stable, and it’ll do what you want it to…
Edited 2007-05-08 01:28
Every operating system requires changes to make it ‘usable’ after installation.
On windows this generally involves installing applications that actually do something useful.
I use gentoo, because I’d rather add things to make my opearating system usable than have to remove things.
“””
Wow! Ubuntu has a long hard road ahead if after installing it you have to make it “usable.”
“””
To “Garymax the Slackware Fan” and the people who modded his post up to +5:
At least bother to actually read the first sentence in the article proper:
“The basic install of Ubuntu provides a usable system. But usable is not the same as optimal.”
Edited 2007-05-09 01:08
Must we have another ubuntu article? Even I, an ubuntu user, am getting pretty damn tired of seeing that damn orange logo on osnews. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the distro, but damn.
Then imagine how feel thous who never liked ubuntu.
There is need for ‘thumbs downs’ votes in osnews too.
That would be digg you’re thinking of. I don’t think anyone wants that here!
I could also add something about Mandy and that tutorial about virtualization:
http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/A_Guide_to_Virtualization_on_Mandriv…
regards,
glyj
…and I’m getting tired of all the Ubuntu articles myself.
It is a leading Linux distro, and it is going to be pretty newsworthy in the coming months being pre-installed on some Dell systems.
What I do have to agree with is that these “articles” are anything but.
The problem isn’t Ubuntu news or reporting it, it is that so much non-news, and un-noteworthy information is passed off as interesting or worth wasting time on.
The signal to noise ratio is becoming so bad that it is making reading anything “Ubuntu” worthless.
I can’t wait for the article about the Ubuntu Dell’s great success, but until then, do we have to make every single minor action and use of the distro into an article and attempt to pass it off as anything other than the linked site’s attempt at easy ad-hits?
Q, How Many Ubuntu Articles does it take to Kill a Brain cell ?
7.04
u mean 7 brain cells it takes
Did the person who wrote that nonsense ever bother to reread it??
Serious Hacks , login music…desktop color
Uhmm, okay.
Go Ubuntu.
And you, yep you, Ubuntu “articles”, yo go too. Just tell me where you go so I can go the other way.
Hello I am a newbie here
I must say if you actually read the article, its pretty good in letting a n00b know the desktop from commandline as well as the common tweaks to the desktops. Those of the nay sayers regarding too many ooobuntu articles go away. I must say though there was one article of 7 steps to ubuntu desktop, Now that was *CRAP*, but this article has a lot of information for a noobie. So stop all your rants about ahh yet another oobuntu article.
modme up people
ps: and those who complain about the articles, why not write ones that are good eh? constructive critisism is good, and the author of that article has spent enough time to write quite a few pages on the topic. A lot of question marks about weather the topic qualifies the actual content is what getting people fired up here i think.
A suggestion to OSnews: Please implement an article level factor/indicator next to the article. Such as beginner/intermediate/prerequisites etc. So people know what linux-unix competence level is required for the article.
cheers
ahh this is a long enough rant of mine, ohh and i just registered on osnews, after a long while being an anonymous reading comments, without posting replies. now where did the anonymous commenting system go grrr….
Edited 2007-05-08 06:53
Let me complain too about the flood of ubuntu articles, since this is the new trend.
Why does no one write or submit any articles anymore about something else? …Oh wait. Everyone is busy complaining about too many ubuntu news on osnews articles they are about to ignore.
“Why does no one write or submit any articles anymore about something else? …Oh wait. Everyone is busy complaining about too many ubuntu news on osnews articles they are about to ignore.
”
I do agree that complaining doesnt help much. But as easy as it is to submit news here as hard is it to get them to show it. Unless ofcause you submit something about everyones favorite toy atm…
Mom can I eat another uburguer ?
hey…there is another in Submit News” – The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.
Mom tell me this is not true!!!
I see many ubuntu haters here. Why? because its got popular and rivals all distro’s in popularity?
shockingly even some ubuntu users too are hating ubuntunews.
Is this something to do with threat brought by ubuntu on privileged user using a leet linux distro that not many win users know? if thats the reason then simply ignore all ubuntu posts on internet and stop trolling. if you think this is ubuntu’s popularity at its best, then thing again. after a year it will be ten times more.
“Posting from windows xp media center edition, almost Full time Linux user who has Opensuse 10.2 installed on dual boot but suggests Ubuntu to new linux users”
I think you’re not getting the picture either. News about Ubuntu ? Ok. This one, and many other ones are not “news”, not even close to it, just writings for newbies at most. And there are heck of a lot of them. And no, we wouldn’t have trouble if they were kept on http://www.ubuntunews.info/ and such, but they somehow keep landing here
When I have some minutes/hour to spare and take a round on the sites I usually visit and see such useless crap, well, that usually ends in me not visiting since it’s a waste of time. Now hopefully you get my picture
I love tips and tricks articles that deal with linux and or unix in general.Arguably ubuntu is what most beginning linux users seem to favor.So it’s not that awkward seeing the name ubuntu popup every now and then.
Instead of a hostile position against any article to many one should consider in my opinion it’s still a linux distribution.And if ubuntu brings more people to the wonderfull rich land of Open Source so be it.
Edited 2007-05-08 09:36
look at this – http://www.ubuntunews.info“ rel=”nofollow”>http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=