Customizing Ubuntu

Who is this article for?

Bored beginner-intermediate Linux users want to make their machines more fun to use.

Linux and Customisations:

Linux is known for its customization features and how much amount of control it provides to the users. In this article let’s look at a few techniques to customize yours to the full extent.

Note: The following customization techniques are applicable only to GNOME-based distributions.

First, let’s start with Tweaks

There are several ways you can tweak Ubuntu to customize its looks and behavior. The easiest way I find is by using the GNOME Tweak tool. It is also known as GNOME Tweaks or simply Tweaks.

I have mentioned it numerous times in my tutorials in the past. Here, I list all the major tweaks you can perform with this tool.

I have used Ubuntu here but the steps should be applicable to any Linux distribution using the GNOME desktop environment.

Install GNOME Tweak tool in Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, and other versions

Gnome Tweak tool is available in the Universe repository in Ubuntu so make sure that you have it enabled in your Software & Updates tool:

If you don’t have it refer to the link and install it.

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

The above command can be used to install gnome-tweaks to your ubuntu.

Once you have installed tweaks we can configure some of the default customizations.

Animations

Turn on animations in order to get cool animations while hovering across screens and so on.

Theme

Here you can modify your theme by modifying applications, cursor, and icons.

If you got bored with the default icons, themes would refer

https://www.gnome-look.org/browse/

to more themes, docks, icons, and son.

How to install it from gnome-look.org??

For illustration purposes, I am going to install a theme called Otis.

Procedure to install and set Otis theme to your ubuntu

First, go to the gnome-look website and search for GTK3/4 Themes here you can find all the themes.

Once found press the download button a similar dropdown should appear

Select one of the versions and it should get installed to your systems Download folder.

Once the zip file is downloaded you can simply extract it and put it to

/usr/share/themes

or use the following commands to extract and move it

tar -xf file_name.tar.xz
sudo mv folder_name /usr/share/themes/

replace the place holders file_name & folder_name with your downloaded & extracted names and you are good to go

As you can see you can find Otis theme in the themes folder and it can be enabled from gnome-tweaks under Appearence.

You can follow the similar steps for icons, fonts and move them to
/usr/share/icons/
/usr/share/fonts

Some more additional tweaks provided by tweaks

Enabling Middle Click Paste contents of the clipboard on middle Click

Feel free to play with tweaks as it provides more features which include

Edge Tiling, Centering new windows, window tile bar customizations, Top bar customizations, Workspace Customizations, and so on.

GNOME Extensions

A GNOME Shell Extension is basically a tiny piece of code that enhances the capability of the GNOME desktop.

Think of it as an add-on in your browser. For example, you can install an add-on in your browser to disable ads. This add-on is developed by a third-party developer. Though your web browser doesn’t provide it by default, installing this add-on enhances the capability of your web browser.

Similarly, GNOME Shell Extensions are like those third-party add-ons and plugins that you can install on top of GNOME. These extensions are created to perform specific tasks such as display weather conditions, internet speed, etc. Mostly, you can access them in the top panel.

Installing GNOME Shell Extensions

Now that you have an idea of what GNOME Extensions are let’s install it

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions

You also need to install Gnome shell integration extension from your browser’s webstore

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integration/gphhapmejobijbbhgpjhcjognlahblep

Similar extensions should appear here you can install all kinds of plugins with the help of https://extensions.gnome.org/.

I would recommend the following extensions for a productive workflow and utility

1. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes/

To load custom themes to shell

2. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/

To connect your android devices with Linux for more integrations, file transfer, and so on.

3. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/

A super cool extension that helps you customize your plane's old ubuntu dock to a full extent modern-looking one.

4. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1362/custom-hot-corners/

Enable you to assign specific tasks when you access a hot corner

5. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1112/screenshot-tool/

A super useful screenshot utility tool available for ubuntu 20

and there are so much more Extensions to try out extension.gnome.org.

Dynamic Wallpaper

Are you bored of watching the single wallpaper each and every time, try wallch.

Wallch is a general purpose Wallpaper Changer for the GNOME desktop which can change the desktop background image after an adjustable time. The aim of Wallch is to make it easier for you to keep your desktop “fresh” and new!

How to install wallch on ubuntu?

sudo apt install wallch

The above command can install wallch onto your system,

How to use wallch?

Here you can specify the interval after the image should change and you can also customize the source folder from which you can load images.

Customizing Linux Terminal

You can modify the terminal’s appearence under preference

We can even modify terminal font color based on the background color

Here’s how

Install Pywal on Linux

sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo pip3 install pywal

Using Pywal to change the terminal color scheme

Download the wallpaper of your choice. Make a note of the location of the wallpaper and its file name.

Open a terminal and use the wal command with the location of your wallpaper file as input:

wal -i path_to_wallpaper_file

It should give you an output like this

Here as you can see it changed the color pallet based on my wallpaper

Troubleshoot:

There is a possible chance you might run into an error like this

ImageMagick Not found on system

if you face a similar error install imagemagick using the following link

sudo apt update
sudo apt install imagemagick

Then you can be able to get the wall running.

Keep the color palette even if you create a new terminal

Now try to Open a new terminal and you’ll notice that it doesn’t use the new color scheme.

By default, the changed color scheme only applies to already run terminal screens. Newly opened terminals keep on using the system’s color scheme.

Open ~/.bashrc file in your favorite text editor. On Ubuntu, you can always open nano editor, using the following command

nano ~/.bashrc

If you are a zsh user use ~/.zshrc

At the end of this ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file, add the following line, save and exit the file.

(cat ~/.cache/wal/sequences &)
cat ~/.cache/wal/sequences
source ~/.cache/wal/colors-tty.sh

Linux has a vast variety and ways for customizing your environment. There are a lot of ways to configure even the smallest aspects of your desktop environment.