Switching From The Ubuntu Netbook Remix Desktop

Now that we are online, we can start to download additional packages to optimise and personalise our netbook.  If you like your eye candy, you’ll probably find the default Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) Desktop too bland and boring.  Unfortunately, to spice it up, we actually need to replace it and switch to the Classic Desktop (the Gnome Desktop) first.

Three Reasons To Switch From The Ubuntu Desktop Remix Desktop

As efficient as the UNR desktop is, unfortunately there are good reasons to switch back to the Classic Desktop:

1. The community-provided NC10 fixes repository installs useful scripts to run when you hit the NC10′s hotkeys (e.g. Fn-F9 to disable the wireless). However, it relies on using compiz – the program that provides all the visual eye candy like drop-shadows on individual windows.
2. The UNR Desktop currently isn’t compatible with compiz.
3. The UNR Desktop can’t be customised at this time … but the Classic Desktop can

But don’t worry. It wasn’t a waste of time installing UNR. We’re going to re-use some of its elements in the Classic Desktop.

Switching Desktops

All credit to Ubuntu … they’ve made it extremely easy to switch between the two types of desktop. Just click the symbol in the top-left hand corner of the screen to pull up the Home Screen, click ‘Preferences’, and then select ‘Switch Desktops’.

The Switch Desktop Mode Window

Select the ‘Classic Desktop’ option, hit ‘Apply’, and a nice Classic Desktop will appear:

Ubuntu Classic Desktop After Switching From UNR Desktop

Optimising For Space

Let’s close that file manager that’s just appeared, so we can get a better look at the Classic Desktop:

An Empty Ubuntu Classic Desktop

The Classic Desktop – and especially its default settings – was designed for full-size desktop screens, not tiny little notebooks.  Thankfully, it doesn’t take much effort to reconfigure it to save a lot of space, and use the best of the features from the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Desktop too.

The first thing we’re going to do is to get rid of that bottom panel.  We don’t need it at all.  Just right click on it, select ‘Delete This Panel’ from the menu, and we have some of our screen space back

That leaves us with just one panel, which we have to make the most of. Those three buttons to the right of the menu: all they do is launch specific apps. If we want to run any applications, we can do that from the menu, so let’s get rid of those. Right-click on each of them, and select ‘Remove From Panel’.

Desktop After Removing App Buttons

There’s plenty of space being wasted on the right-hand side of the screen too. Let’s start over there by shrinking down the size of the User Switch applet. Right-click on where it says your name, and in the window that pops up, change the appearance to be just an icon:

User Switcher Preferences Window

After you save the preference changes, the panel should look something like this:

User Switcher Applet Reconfigured

Let’s change the order that things are displayed on the right-hand side, just to make that area easier to use day-to-day:

Right Hand Side Of The Panel Re-arranged

The clock is still taking up a lot of room, so right-click on it, select ‘Preferences’, and let’s hide the date:

Changing The Clock Preferences

What are we going to do with all the space we’ve now created? The first thing to do is to add the System Monitor applet, so that we can keep an eye on how hard our netbook is being made to work. To do this, right-click on the panel, and select ‘Add To Panel’. The following window will pop up:

Adding The System Monitor Applet

Whilst we’re at it, let’s also add the ‘CPU Frequency Monitor’ applet. This applet tells us what speed the netbook’s CPU is currently running at, and it also allows us to override the automatic behaviour should we need to:

Adding The CPU Frequency Monitor

… and, before we finish in there, let’s add one final applet. We need something in the panel to show us which applications are currently running, so that we can quickly switch between them. The applet we want is called ‘Window Picker’, and it’s actually part of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Desktop that we’re going to re-use:

Adding The Window Picker Applet

We’re done adding applets, so you can close that window now. Hopefully, you’ll notice that the CPU Frequency Monitor is taking up too much space, so let’s edit its preferences and shrink it down!

Changing The Appearance Of the CPU Frequency Monitor

Move the applets around on the left to tidy things up, and you should end up with a desktop looking like this:

The Space-Optimised Ubuntu Classic Desktop

To give you an idea of how the re-configured panel looks when the desktop is in use, I’ve got one last screenshot for you:

The Space-Optimised Ubuntu Classic Desktop In Use

In future posts, I’ll look at the System Monitor and CPU Frequency Monitor applets in more detail.

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~ by Stuart on June 19, 2009.