further information on configuring networking.
● Personal settings– Tools in this group let you change your desktop background (Background), use different online accounts (Online Accounts), and set your language and date and currency format based on region (Region and Language) and screen locking (Screen). To change your background, open the System Settings window, select Background, and then select from the available Wallpapers. To add your own Background, download a wallpaper image you like to your Pictures folder, click the Wallpapers box to change it to Pictures folder, and choose the image you want.
● Bluetooth– If your computer has Bluetooth hardware, you can enable that device to communicate with other Bluetooth devices (such as a Bluetooth headset or printer).
● Printers– Instead of using the System Settings window to configure a printer, refer to Chapter 16, “Configuring a Print server,” for information on setting up a printer using the CUPS service.
● Sound– Click the Sound settings button to adjust sound input and output devices on your system.
Extending the GNOME 3 desktop
If the GNOME 3 shell doesn't do everything you like, don't despair. You can add extensions to provide additional functionality to GNOME 3. Also, a GNOME Tweak Tool lets you change advanced settings in GNOME 3.
Using GNOME shell extensions
GNOME shell extensions are available to change the way your GNOME desktop looks and behaves. Visit the GNOME Shell Extensions site (http://extensions.gnome.org) from your Firefox browser on your GNOME 3 desktop. That site tells you what extensions you have installed and which ones are available for you to install (you must select to allow the site to see those extensions).
Because the extensions page knows what extensions you have and the version of GNOME 3 you are running, it can present only those extensions that are compatible with your system. Many of the extensions help you add back in features from GNOME 2, including these:
● Applications Menu– Adds an Applications menu to the top panel, just as it was in GNOME 2.
● Places Status Indicator– Adds a systems status menu, similar to the Places menu in GNOME 2, to let you quickly navigate to useful folders on your system.
● Window list– Adds a list of active windows to the top panel, similar to the Window list that appeared on the bottom panel in GNOME 2.
To install an extension, simply select the ON button next to the name. Or you can click the extension name from the list to see the extension's page, and click the button on that page from OFF to ON. Click Install when you are asked if you want to download and install the extension. The extension is then added to your desktop.
Figure 2.9 shows an example of the Applications Menu (the GNOME foot icon), Window List (showing several active applications icons), and Places Status Indicator (with folders displayed from a drop-down menu) extensions installed.
Figure 2.9 Extensions add features to the GNOME 3 desktop.
More than 100 GNOME shell extensions are available now, and more are being added all the time. Other popular extensions include Notifications Alert (which alerts you of unread messages), Presentation Mode (which prevents the screensaver from coming on when you are giving a presentation), and Music Integration (which integrates popular music players into GNOME 3 so you are alerted about songs being played).
Because the Extensions site can keep track of your extensions, you can click the Installed extensions button at the top of the page and see every extension that is installed. You can turn the extensions off and on from there and even delete them permanently.
Using the GNOME Tweak Tool
If you don't like the way some of the built-in features of GNOME 3 behave, you can change many of them with the GNOME Tweak Tool. This tool is not installed by default with the Fedora GNOME Live CD, but you can add it by installing the gnome-tweak-tool package. (See Chapter 10, “Getting and Managing Software,” for information on how to install software packages in Fedora.)
After installation, the GNOME Tweak Tool is available by launching the Advanced Settings icon from your Applications screen. Start with the Desktop category to consider what you might want to change in GNOME 3. Figure 2.10 shows the Tweak Tool (Advanced Settings window) displaying Appearance settings.
Figure 2.10 Change desktop settings using the GNOME Tweak Tool (Advanced Settings).
If fonts are too small for you, select the Fonts category and click the plus sign next to the Scaling Factor box to increase the font size. Or change fonts individually for documents, window titles, or monospace fonts.
Under Top Bar settings, you can change how clock information is displayed in the top bar or set whether to show the week number in the calendar. To change the look of the desktop, select the Appearance category and change the Icons theme and GTK+ theme as you like from drop-down boxes.
Starting with desktop applications
The Fedora GNOME 3 desktop live DVD comes with some cool applications you can start using immediately. To use GNOME 3 as your everyday desktop, you should install it permanently to your computer's hard disk and add the applications you need (a word processor, image editor, drawing application, and so on). If you are just getting started, the following sections list some cool applications to try out.
Managing files and folders with Nautilus
To move, copy, delete, rename, and otherwise organize files and folders in GNOME 3, you can use the Nautilus file manager. Nautilus comes with the GNOME desktop and works like other file managers you may use in Windows or Mac.
To open Nautilus, click the Files icon from the GNOME Dash or Applications list. Your user account starts with a set of folders designed to hold the most common types of content: Music, Pictures, Videos, and the like. These are all stored in what is referred to as your Home directory. Figure 2.11 shows Nautilus open to a home directory.
Figure 2.11 Manage files and folders from the Nautilus window.
When you want to save files you downloaded from the Internet or created with a word processor, you can organize them into these folders. You can create new folders as needed, drag and drop files and folders to copy and move them, and delete them.
Because Nautilus is not much different from most file managers you have used on other computer systems, this chapter does not go into detail about how to use drag-and-drop and traverse folders to find your content. However, I do want to make a few observations that may not be obvious about how to use Nautilus:
● Home folder– You have complete control over the files and folders you create in your Home folder. Most other parts of the filesystem are not accessible to you as a regular user.
● Filesystem organization– Although it appears under the name Home, your home folder is actually located in the filesystem under the /home folder in a folder named after your username – for example, /home/liveuser or /home/chris. In the next few chapters, you learn how the filesystem is organized (especially in relation to the Linux command shell).
● Working with files and folders– Right-click a file or folder icon to see how you can act on it.