The properties for your background image can be set here by
either selecting a color or an image. If you select a color you
have the option of having Solid or Gradient colors. If
you choose to have Gradient colors you may choose between a
Vertical or Horizontal gradient and choose the second color for
the gradient to end on.
If you decide to have an image as wallpaper you may browse for the image
you wish to use. Once you have found your image you need to decide
whether you would like to have the image tiled across the screen,
centered, scaled up while keeping the same aspect, or simply scaled up to
fit the screen. Once you have changed your background properties you may
press the Try button at the bottom of the Control
Center to make the change.
If you would like to set the background by any other means you
may disable this capplet by selecting Disable
background selection.
In this capplet you can change your xscreensaver properties. This
capplet contains a list of available screen savers you may choose
and a demo screen. Below these two dialogs you will see a set of
tools that allow you to change the settings for the global
screen saver properties. If the screen saver you choose has
particular settings you can change those by pressing the
Settings button that appears below the
Screen Saver list.
Global Screen Saver settings - In this section of the capplet
you can change the time, password, and power management
properties. You can decide how long you would like the screen
saver to wait before starting by typing the number of minutes in
the Start After text box. If you would like
a password to return to your desktop click the
Require Password button. Your account
login password is the password set for the screen saver.
You are also given the option of using power management -- if
your monitor is capable of it. You may set the time to wait
before the monitor is shut off by typing the time in the
Shutdown monitor text box.
The Appearances capplets contains the Theme Selector which allows
you to select which GTK theme you would like to run.
GTK themes are coordinated settings that allow the GTK widget set to
change its look and feel. The widget set is the set of tools that provide
buttons, scrollbars, checkboxes, etc. to applications. GNOME compliant
applications use the GTK tool set so most of your GNOME applications will
change their look and feel if you change the GTK theme.
To change your GTK theme select a theme from the Available
Themes list on the left side of the main workspace. If you have
Auto Preview selected you will be able to see what the theme
looks like in the preview window below. If you like the theme
press the Try button on the bottom of the
GNOME Control Center to install it.
There are a few GTK themes that come loaded with GNOME when you install
it. If you would like more themes you can check resources on the Internet
like http://gtk.themes.org. Once you have found and
downloaded a theme you like, press the Install new
theme button. This will launch a file browser that allows you
to find the theme you have just downloaded. The theme files should be in a
tar.gz or .tgz format(otherwise
known as a "tarball"). Once you have found the file press the
OK and gnome will install the theme for you
automatically. Now you can look in the Available Themes list for the theme
you have installed.
Once the theme has been unpacked into the .themes directory it
will be listed in the available themes window the next time you
start the GNOME Control Center.
If you would like to change the font used in the current theme you may do
so by selecting the Use custom font checkbox and
selecting the font from the font button below it. This will bring up a
font selection dialog that allows you to specify the font, its style, and
size.
Because GNOME is not dependent on any one window manager this
capplet allows you to select which window manager you wish to
use. The Window Manager capplet does not determine which window
managers you have available but allows you to define what, and
where they are.
The Window Manager capplet has a main list of the window
managers that you can currently select from. Whichever window
manager is active is notated by the word "Current".
If you wish to add a new window manager to the main list you may
press the Add button. This will launch
the Add New Window Manager dialog.
In the Add New Window Manager dialog you may specify
the name you wish to give the window manager, the command to launch that
window manager, and the command to launch any configuration tool that
might be available for that window manager.
If you know that the window manager is fully GNOME compliant and
can be session managed you may select the Window
manager is session managed button. If you are unsure
you should check the documentation of your window manager.
Press OK when you are done.
Once you have finished adding your new window manager you will
see it appear in the main list of window managers. If you need
to change any of the properties you set in the Add New
Window Manager dialog you may select the window
manager from the main list with your mouse and press the
Edit button.
You may also delete any window manager in the main list by
selecting it with your mouse and pressing the
Delete button.
If you are ready to switch the current window manager you may select the
manager you wish to run from the main list and press the
Try button. If you would like to run the
configuration tool, make sure the manager you want to configure is
selected and press the Run Configuration Tool for [window
manager name] button.