Unity Tweaks in Ubuntu 11.04
As I said in my previous post, my upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (love the name) was almost perfect. I’m getting to grips with – and actually quite liking – the new Unity interface. I know that everyone’s opinion varies, and that whether you like a new UI or not is entirely personal and subjective. Here, though, are a few tweaks which have made Unity a bit more usable for me. Like adding your favourite folders (from the old “Places” menu) to the Home folder launcher.
A couple of my initial gripes with Unity centered around the fact that it seemed to take me a tad longer to get where I wanted to be. For instance, my Documents, Pictures, Downloads and root directory shortcuts had vanished along with the Places menu. This handy little tweak gives you the following menu, when you right click on the Home folder in the Unity launcher:
Home launcher tweak
To get this, simply download the script from this link.
When you have downloaded it (assuming it is in your Downloads folder), open a terminal window and type:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/tweak_home_folder.sh
sudo ~/Downloads/tweak_home_folder.sh
You may have to log out of Unity in order for the changes to take effect, but when you log back in simply right click on your Home folder in the Unity launcher to see the new menu.
Also, I found that task switching had slowed down in Unity. To speed things up again, do the following:
- Go to System Settings
- Run the CompizConfig Settings Manager
- If this is not visible, then drop to a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
- When you get into the CompizConfig Settings Manager, select the Window Management category
- Then select the Scale applet
- Click on Bindings and I chose the Bottom Right corner of the screen to initiate the window picker.
Now all I have to do is flick my mouse pointer to the bottom right of the screen, and I can quickly task switch.
I also modified the default launcher behaviour through System Settings -> Launcher & Menus, so that the launcher is now only activated when my mouse pointer is in the top left corner of the screen. This saves a lot of frustration when my wildly erratic movements take the mouse pointer too close to the left of the screen.
Hope you enjoy these. I’ll add more tweaks as I find them!
I’m not sure about your last tweak, my launcher only appears if the pointer is in the top left anyway, I didn’t change any setting?
I find I’ve gone back to using alt-tab a lot like good ole’ Windoze for task switching, don’t know if it’s faster or slower than any other way, just seems different to me. Unity took a bit of getting used to for me but I definitely think it’s better than Gnome 2 or 3.
@John Lewis Hmmmm….I don’t know why it was set to “left edge” for me, but it was causing problems when I had applications maximised.
I like Unity too…it seems to use the screen real estate more intelligently, and I’m finding that many of the keyboard shortcuts are becoming second nature too
I have a mental block at learning shortcuts, I don’t know why. I don’t think I knew how to copy and paste using shortcuts until I was at HCS, I think I’m better at memorising things that resemble English. What shortcuts do you use in Unity?
I use Alt-Tab to switch, Super (Windows key) -W to open the switcher for all windows in all workspaces. Super-1 to open the home folder, Ctrl-Alt-T to open a terminal, Alt-F2 for the run box…ummmm…maybe a few more
Wow Matt those are really good shortcuts, thanks! I’m going to break the habit of a few years and actually learn those. I knew about Alt-F2 to open the Gnome Settings Editor, you couldn’t tweak very much without getting into that (irrelevant with Unity of course).
I think it would make a really good article if you detailed those and anymore you can think of.
Of course it isn’t entirely “accurate”
that I don’t learn shortcuts, it’s just that I don’t learn them unless I think I really, really need them. “Screen” springs to mind ctrl-a-d, ctrl-a-n, ctrl-a-c, but I don’t tend to use screen anymore as my days of self flagellation with Gentoo are over, so I don’t need to start big compiles off and come back to them hours later.
Remembered another. ctrl-a-dr to detach an active session and immediately reattach it. You need that one alot on mobile midband (or crapband as I like to call it).
After just watching City beat Stoke to go third using sopcast on 10.10 i was wondering if you have manged to get sopcast working under 11.04?
Now I understand you may not want to answer this on grounds of being a gooner, but I would like to know if you have had any success
@Mazebane Ha…I’m not talking about football at the moment
congrats on the FA cup though (gritted teeth).
I actually upgraded rather than performing a clean install, so sopcast continued working for me. What problems are you encountering?
I haven’t upgraded yet but i have a notebook that i have installed 11.04 on but haven’t tried Sopcast yet, i will have a go this weekend i think.
Funny thing is the post on Sopcast for 10.10 i mention dreaming of silverware
I did this and nothing changed at all, + the looks of 11.04 are ok, I’m completely new to Ubuntu