A minimal customization for Ubuntu

I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Even though it looked great out of the box with gnome, I wanted to personalize it a little bit.

This is how it looked right out of the box

Default desktop

This is how it looks after customization

If what you wanted was a total overhaul of your system , you could also look into changing your desktop environment to something like KDE plasma or something similar. If you just want something similar, keep reading!

Here are the things I did in order. You can follow these steps to achieve similar results, or use this as a base for further customization.

1. Changing Login screen wallpaper

We will be using a script made by Pratap Kumar on Github for this purpose. It basically runs a few bash commands that would set the image for you.

While I did not face any issues with the script, please do note that it is generally not a good idea to execute random code that you find on the internet. If you’re familiar with using Linux , you can follow this and try do it manually. If you want an easier solution , you can go along with the script

You’ll need git for this and if your Ubuntu is a fresh install , you will need to install it. You can check if it’s installed by simply typing git . If you don’t have it , you can simply install it using apt.

First update your repositories using

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade #this is optional 

Install git using

sudo apt install git

Clone the repository :

git clone https://github.com/PRATAP-KUMAR/ubuntu-gdm-set-background.git

Run the script with the path to your image

sudo bash ubuntu-gdm-set-background --image /path/to/image/

Reboot to see changes.

Login screen with custom background

Also , did you know you can remove the Ubuntu logo from the login screen ?

The file is located here /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png . You can just delete or rename it to remove it.

2. Change Lock screen wallpaper

You will need to install 2 applications : gnome-shell-extensions and gnome-shell-extension-manager

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

Open the extension manager , enable ‘Use Extensions’ and install lock screen background extension. You can look up extensions on the browse section.

Lock screen extension from unlockDialogBackground

You can then click on the gear icon and set an image

Reboot to see changes.

Lock screen

3. Changing default appearance

Gnome has some basic customization available through the settings which I guess would be enough for most users. We’ll start from here

You can go to Settings > Appearance and Settings > Ubuntu Desktop to configure the basic looks . I changed into dark mode, hid the desktop icons, changed the wallpaper and adjusted the dock.

4. Blurring elements

You can blur the top bar and other UI elements using blur my shell. We’ll use another gnome extension for that. In the extension-manager app , find and install blur my shell and enable it.

Optionally , you can go to settings>Ubuntu Desktop and enable ‘Auto-hide the dock’.

5. Wallpaper engine

I’d like to see fresh new wallpapers every few days on my system. I also don’t want to manually search and download everything. This is where a wallpaper engine comes in. We’re going to use a wallpaper manager called Variety. It’s free and opensource. This would fetch wallpapers from the sources you specified and would cycle through it at specified duration. To install ,

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt install variety 

Once installed , open it from the applications menu and agree to provide network access when prompted. Network access is only necessary if you’re planning to make Variety fetch wallpapers from online automatically. You can also set it up to just use wallpapers that are stored in your local folder

Here , you can check the existing sources you want to fetch wallpapers from, or you can add other sources by clicking on the add button. At the moment it only supports a few sources (which has plenty of good wallpapers). I use Wallhaven to fetch my wallpapers.

Once you’ve set the source and how often it should rotate wallpapers, you can close out of it. Variety would fetch the wallpapers in the background and would set one automatically. While Variety is running, you will have an image icon in your top bar to access quick settings.

In some older versions of Ubuntu , you may run into some problems with Varitey when used with dark mode. To fix the issue you can open up a terminal and run this command

sed -i '/^# Gnome 3, Unity*/a gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri-dark "file://$WP" 2> /dev/null' /home/$USER/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper

You can take a look at this for more info on the issue.

6. Window tiling using Pop Shell

If you have used Pop OS before , you might have come across the window tiling system it uses. For the users who haven’t , it basically tiles your windows neatly and it would be easy to manage using keyboard shortcuts. Fortunately , the tiling system is available to install in our system by installing the Pop Shell.

Note, after installation , it may go into a blank screen. In case that happens, just hit ctrl+c . You can install using the following commands :

$ sudo apt install node-typescript make git
$ git clone https://github.com/pop-os/shell
$ cd shell
$ make local-install

It will prompt you for confirmation and warn you that some of your default keybindings would change. Don’t worry , you can always set custom key bindings again in the settings>keyboard>Keyboard shortcuts

Once it’s installed, you will see a new icon on the top bar. If you don’t , go to the extension manager and enable pop shell. Now , you can click on that icon and enable tiling windows to enable tiling (and disable it to go back to normal mode).

You can also refer this for knowing more about Pop shell and installing it.

9. Terminal Customization

Customizing Ubuntu is never complete without modifying the terminal. After all that’s where most of us would be spending our time in.

Heads-up: if you choose to keep using pop shell, the keyboard shortcut for opening the terminal would now be super + t .

We’ll start by customizing the looks by pressing the hamburger button in the terminal window and creating a new profile by clicking the + button I’m just going to change the colors and make it a bit transparent.

For the next part , we will be installing ZSH and Oh-my-zsh to extend the capabilities of our terminal.

Install it with the command

$ sudo apt install zsh

Verify installation by running the command zsh --version
Now we need to make it our default shell by running the command

$ chsh -s $(which zsh)

Log out and log back in to start using your new shell. When you are opening the terminal the first time , you will be be asked to configure some settings. You can follow the onscreen instruction and either customize it based on your needs or just leave it as default (which is what i did )

You can check which shell you’re running by using the command echo $SHELL

It should display something like this

You can refer this to know more about installing ZSH

On top of this you can install a framework for ZSH known as ‘Oh-my-zsh’.
You can install oh-my-zsh with just this single command:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

You can also add more zsh customization. There are lots of custom scripts available for this, all just a search away.

That’s it! You now have a minimal but interesting Ubuntu set-up. You can use this as your base set-up for more customization. You can maybe try out some new themes , extensions or even a different display manager.

Feel free to let me know if you want to see more tutorials like this on something you want.

Have a great day!