Fedora Linux

Autohide

When selected, most of the panel will slide off the screen when not in contact with the mouse pointer, freeing up space for applications. To unhide the panel, place your mouse pointer over the part of the panel that is still visible.

Show hide buttons

Enables buttons at the end of the panel that can be clicked to make the panel slide off the screen (endwise). The 'Arrows on Hide Buttons' checkbox will make the hide buttons bigger and add a graphical arrow to each one.

The Background tab lets you set the background color to the default for the current desktop theme, a solid color (which can have a pseudo-transparency effect applied using the Style slider), or a background image. This is almost always left at the default setting, which uses the desktop theme.

2.2.1.3. Customizing the desktop background

The menu option System>Preferences>Desktop Background is used to adjust the desktop background color and imagebut most Fedora users get there using the shortcut of right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Change Desktop Background. Both methods cause the Desktop Background Preferences window to appear, shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7. Desktop Background Preferences window

You can change to any of the listed background images by clicking on it. To add your own image, drag and drop an image file from the Nautilus file manager, or click the Add Wallpaper button and enter the filename; to remove an image, highlight it and click the Remove button. If you don't want a background image, select the No Wallpaper option.

The Style control determines how the selected image will be displayed:

Centered

The image is placed, full-size, in the center of the screen. If it's smaller than the screen, the remaining space is filled with the desktop color; if it's larger than the screen, it is automatically cropped.

Fill Screen

The image is scaled in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions to fill the screen. This may result in some distortion of the image if its rectangular proportions ( aspect ratio ) don't match those of the screen.

Scaled

The image is scaled, keeping the original aspect ratio, until it fills the screen. Any remaining space is filled with the desktop color. For photographs, this is a better choice than Fill Screen.

Tiled

The image is placed in the upper-left corner of the screen and repeated as many times as necessary (both horizontally and vertically) to fill the screen.

The Desktop Colors control sets the desktop color style (solid, horizontal gradient, or vertical gradient) and the colors used for that style. The color or gradient selected here will fill any part of the background not covered by an image and will show through background images that have transparency.

2.2.1.4. Customizing the window manager's behavior

Select the menu option System>Preferences>Window to modify the behavior of the window manager, Metacity. Three options are presented in a window:

Select windows when the mouse moves over them

This behavior is called focus-follows-mouse and is very popular with some long-time users of the X Window System. Normally, you need to click on a window to give it focus in other words, the last window clicked is the window that receives keyboard input. If you select this checkbox, you can focus a window simply by placing your mouse pointer over it. This is convenient, but if your mouse pointer drifts to another window, you may end up typing into the wrong window.

If you select 'focus-follows-mouse,' then you can optionally configure the window manager to automatically raise focused windows after a brief pause, so that they are on top of other windows.

Titlebar Action

Configures the window manager to maximize or shade a window when the titlebar is double-clicked.

Movement Key

This setting selects the modifier key for moving windows. If you hold down the selected modifier and click on a window, you can drag it to a new location.

2.2.1.5. Customizing Nautilus

The Nautilus file manager is configured using the Edit>Preferences option in any Nautilus window, or through the panel menu option System>Preferences>File Management. A configuration window will appear with five tabs, containing lots of options.

Here are some common customizations for Nautilus:

? The appearance of folder contents can be separately configured for each folder using the Nautilus toolbar. To configure default settings, set the View New Folders Using and the Arrange Items options on the Views tab.

? To disable the spatial behavior of Nautilus, select the Behavior tab and select the 'Always Open in Browser Windows' checkbox.

? To enable the direct deletion of files (instead of placing them in the trash, which requires the trash to be emptied before the disk space is freed up), select 'Include a Delete Command that Bypasses Trash' on the Behavior tab. Right-clicking on a file will now expose both the normal 'Move to Trash' option and a new Delete option.

2.2.1.6. Customizing keyboard shortcuts

Both mice and keyboards are effective input devicesbut switching between them can significantly slow you down. A good set of keyboard shortcuts enables you to perform common operations without switching to the