Recently, I ran some updates and my theme automagically changed. This is annoying, but I need to go to work, so I’ll have to look into it later. However, I can’t possibly leave the house without at least disabling the annoying little clicks that make noise every time I click something. Here’s what I did:

• Go to: System -> Preferences -> Sound
• Find the drop-down box entitled ‘Sound theme’.
• Choose ‘No sounds’.
• Enjoy the sound of silence….

(Also, I made sure the mute button for ‘Alert volume’ was ticked, just in case.)

I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 and GNOME 2.30.2 on this machine.  (Yeah, yeah, I know I need to upgrade, but I’m avoiding GNOME 3.  I watched the SO struggle with Mint for awhile, and am considering The Next Step.  But that’s another rant/post.)

I like the focus to change when I move my mouse so that I can type in one window whilst having another window on top.

To make this happen in Ubuntu 10.04, go to System -> Preferences -> Windows and click the tickbox next to the statement, “Select windows when the mouse moves over them”.

Now that I’ve moved the close button to the right of the maximise and minimise buttons, I want to move all three buttons to the right-hand side of the window.

On the computer I don’t care about messing up, I’m trying ubuntu-tweak which I saw mentioned on the Ubuntu forums.

Here’s what worked for me.

I went to http://ubuntu-tweak.com/ and clicked the big button on the left hand side of the page to download and install the latest version of ubuntu-tweak (version 0.5.4.1). Ubuntu automagically gave me the option to install; it was quite a painless procedure.

Once installed, I could access ubuntu-tweak by navigating to:

Applications -> System Tools -> Ubuntu Tweak.

To move the close/maximise/minimise buttons to the right-hand side of the window in a GNOME desktop environment, find:

Desktop -> Window Manager Settings

on the tree view on the left. Click on:

Window Manager Settings.

There, right at the top, in all its glory, sits

Window Titlebar Button Layout

and the choice of “Place”. Click the radiobutton to select

Right

and viola! Life is a better place in which to live. I feel so much better now.

(This seems to sort out the position of the close button in relation to the maximise/minimise buttons as well, so the previous post is unnecessary.)

Note: I’ve never used ubuntu-tweak before so can’t make any guarantees about its safety, reliability, compatibility, etc. As stated before, I’m trying it out on a computer that I’m happy to mess around with.

Well, I’ve finally started the process of migrating my computers to Ubuntu 10.04. This means several rounds of fixing things. Might as well post it all here as I’ll be doing this at least three more times. >+:Sigh:+< One of the things I wanted to do was put the close button on the right of the maximise and minimise buttons, as they were situated in previous versions of Ubuntu. Note: follow the instructions in the above post to move the buttons to the right hand side of the window and change the order of the buttons so that the close button is on the right of the maximise/minimise buttons. Follow the instructions below to leave the buttons on the left-hand side of the window but to put the close button to the right of the other two.

This site had instructions for changing the order of the buttons:

• Open the configuration editor (press Alt+F2 and type gconf-editor)
• In the left-hand tree, find app -> metacity -> general and double-click on the field called button_layout.
• Change the value field to menu:minimize,maximize,close to move the close button to the right of the minimise and maximise buttons.

Thank you, Codigo Manso!