Precise Adds New Unity Configuration Options

By , Published January 26, 2012

A handful of new configuration options have landed in the Ubuntu 12.04 ‘User Interface’ settings pane.

Many of the features were previously revealed in an Ubuntu Design Document.

The adjustments provided in the GNOME Control Center update, which apply to both Unity and Unity 2-D, let you do the following: -

  • Adjust the size of icons on the Unity launcher
  • Turn Launcher hiding on/off
  • Specify the Launcher ‘reveal spot’

New Unity settings in Ubuntu 12.04

The nervous amongst you will appreciate the inclusion of a ‘Restore Defaults‘ that easily resets changes made to options in the pane to the default settings.

Unity settings - behaviour tab

Although applications like the CompizConfig Settings Manager or MyUnity (not installed by default) permit a wider range of  ’experimental‘ configuration – such as changing the color of the Unity Dash and turning icon ‘backlights’ off – the inclusion of minor tweaks in the User Interface pane is a welcome step in the right direction.

The handful of options might seem meagre to most, but it grants casual users a tad more control over how their desktop behaves without being swamped in a tide of confusing configuration options.

Related posts:

  1. Unity Global Menu To Become Optional in Ubuntu 12.04?
  2. Ubuntu 11.10 Adds Options to Change Launcher Opacity, Hide Mounted Drives, More
  3. Ubuntu 11.04 Unity update adds new look launcher, more effect options and scrollwheel indicator support
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  • radek radek

    Super. Even more settings …

    Mouse pointer in the lower left corner shows all the windows. As a WIN+W

    • http://twitter.com/Zta77 Stephan Henningsen

      Funny, I have Mouse in top right screen corner to show all windows.  Maybe lower left is better as it is less used by apps.  I’d like to try adding Alt key to the combination (Alt + moue in top right screen corner), though this isn’t possible in ccsm in this particular configuration =

  • http://sahil-tech.blogspot.com Sahilshines

    Resotore Default!!! Long awaited feature…

    thnx canonical…still way too go

  • https://profiles.google.com/phonixor phonixor

    good, so they moved(or copied) some of the most important settings from compiz settings manager, to the default UI menu, that’s great!

    guess its a good way to roll out features in the compiz settings manager, and once the tech savy users pretty much proven its safe/useful, it can be added to the default… 

    i do wonder if they will add the remove global menu feature there… 
    and i wonder how the topbar and launcher will behave in multiple monitor environments, and how much of that is tweakable!
    (i want a 2 monitor setup, one for game, one for looking stuff up, and work :P (so i guess i want my game on my 2nd screen, so that i keep the default OS user interface fully working on the main screen))

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon

      @openid-71379:disqus I’m hoping that the the global menu toggle will make it in. It seems like a logical fit now HUD has been announced; it offers users the chance to switch off a duplicated item. 

      • Sebastien Lemarinel
        • Anonymous

          Wow. And this is all going into Precise? Seriously, I personally liked the previous 2 releases, but these added settings seem to adress virtually ALL my remaining concerns.

        • Joost Van Durme

           Looks amazing! And I saw the option to disable the global app menu. Nice!

        • http://mark-y-a.myopenid.com/ Marky

          Is that for real? Nice! Looks really great! :)

        • http://twitter.com/cedr cedr

          The straightforward Zeitgeist controls (“Privacy”) look fantastic as well!

        • Dylan Coakley

          Thanks for posting that link! MIND = BLOWN!!! o.O

      • http://www.benjaminkerensa.com Benjamin Kerensa

        I wish they had implemented this feature which was targeted for oneiric:
        https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-o-screensaver

        • https://login.ubuntu.com/+id/R4szkb7 Jo-Erlend Schinstad

          Save the screen by turning the monitor off when you don’t use it — save the planet from meaningless energy consumption, and extend the life of your monitor.

    • Joost Van Durme

      The launcher was not behaving as it should in multiple monitor setups in 11.04 and 11.10, but a fix has been released for that. Problem was that Unity did not detect the primary screen as set by xrandr, so it was always shown on the leftmost screen. The fix is however not yet passed to Precise. But I guess it will be, since Mark S. promised excellent support for multi monitor setups. ;-)

      See and follow the bug here:

      https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/742544

      • Anonymous

        Hopefully there will be an option to manually set to display the launcher on the secondary monitor.

        • Joost Van Durme

           I’m sure there will be. The fix above for 11.10 can do that just from the Display gui. No command lines anymore. You drag the black bar to the screen that should be regarded as primary and that one gets the launcher. Tried it and it works. Using proprietary ATI Radeon driver. Now waiting for the feature/fix in 12.04.

          • Anonymous

            Okay but what about getting the launcher explicitly NOT on the primary monitor? And what about the proprietary Nvidia driver?

          • Joost Van Durme

             Oh good question. Perhaps you can then set the launcher monitor as secondary? I don’t have experience witn NVidia, but in the bug report above the developer Daniel van Vught also fixed an NVidia issue in 11.10. He’s good. Follow that report.

      • https://profiles.google.com/phonixor phonixor

        lets hope these improvements to unity will be met with impunity

    • Anonymous

      I hope to get a working two display setup too! Unfortunately with the proprietary Nvidia driver, which is btw the only driver on Linux that works with most of my games (even WINE games), does not seem to behave accordingly. Many games simply doesn’t work well with a dual screen setup, they don’t let you set the correct resolution for only one of the two. The only way is to disable the second display while you play the first one in fullscreen mode. Everything else is simply not satisfying. I use Ubuntu for 5 and a half year and play games regularly, but this bugs me forever and doesn’t seem to be really fixable.

      • http://www.frothingthefrap.com/ Shannon Black

        the trick is to mannually set the resolutions for twinview the xorg.conf file… you seperate each resolution by “;” and  in each mode you seperate each screen by “,” .. that way you can set one of the modes to one screen only and the second display will disable when running a fullscreen game .. if you google twinview and nvidia multimonitor you’ll see tons of solutions…

        however, what would be great is if this was out the box!

        • Anonymous

          I did exactly that for a couple of month now, but that’s part of the reason itself. A dual screen setup doesn’t makes any sense when you have do disable the secondary monitor if you use a fullscreen app on the primary one!

      • https://login.ubuntu.com/+id/R4szkb7 Jo-Erlend Schinstad

         One good thing about Unity, is that it makes the desktop look seriously cool, unless you have bad drivers, which makes that manufacturer look seriously bad. Let’s hope they’ll get a move on and take Linux drivers seriously.

  • Andrei Petcu

    This is soooo cool. The only bug I really hated on 11.10 is the fact that when switching to reveal model upper left corner did not work always…. I have no Ideea why but the bug was ignored by the dev team because it was reproduced using ccsm :( . This was default behavior in 11.04 I think…..

  • Satchit Bhogle

    Great, but is this the extent of added customisability in Precise? For example, I’d love to see theme previews like we had in GNOME2.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GE4EYP3QOQ246PLG2Y2DOD2NIQ Dr. Fly

      That would be especially nice considering that other tools for setting the theme (GNOME Tweak Tool, Ubuntu Tweak, etc.) don’t offer a theme preview yet.

      • https://launchpad.net/~grissi Christian Rupp

        It would be non-sense, due to the fact, that every theme is applied immediately and so you don’t need any preview, it would just be clutter and inconsistent

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GE4EYP3QOQ246PLG2Y2DOD2NIQ Dr. Fly

          How would it be inconsistent?

          A theme preview would be nice because I could then visually look for whatever theme I feel like having applied at that moment, versus having to try every single one out in a text-only menu.

  • Anonymous

    great, keep it going. We want configurable unity :D

  • http://forteller.net/ Børge / forteller

    I hope they will show the (changes to the) launcher in that preview screen too, not just the background. That would be the most natural thing, IMHO.

  • http://twitter.com/Zta77 Stephan Henningsen

    I’d like to try Alt key + Mouse on left screen edge.

  • https://launchpad.net/~stevepdp stevepdp

    It’s good to see more configuration options landing, and it’s good to demonstrate that features designed and developed for Gnome’s shell are also compatible with the Unity shell.

    Are there any examples of Unity features being used in Gnome shell?

  • Ezra Sharp

    those tabs.. this is slowly turning into the Desktop properties dialog of Windows XP! :P

  • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

    Where is the desktop font settings?!

    • Anonymous

      I miss it too

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GE4EYP3QOQ246PLG2Y2DOD2NIQ Dr. Fly

    Having these customization options available right out of the box will hopefully help address a common concern I hear that Unity is not customizable.  People needed to realize that the stability and features of the interface have to come first before customization options will begin to appear.

    • http://profiles.google.com/nishantagrwal12993 Nishant Agrwal

      exactly

  • http://profiles.google.com/krnekhelesh Nekhelesh Ramananthan

    I dont see the option though I am running precise daily build. Do you have the proposed updates enabled?

  • Marc Santos

    I am hoping to see other theme controls in this area. Need to be able to change icon themes, need all GTK3 themes to show up here as well. We should not need to use Ubuntu tweak to change basic theme parts, this needs to be pre-installed in the OS IMHO. 

  • Anonymous

    Does anyone know what size icons we’ll be able to specify? The CompizConfig Settings Manager’s smallest size of 32 is still way too big for my tastes.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GE4EYP3QOQ246PLG2Y2DOD2NIQ Dr. Fly

      Precise user here…the smallest size is 32 and the largest is 64. If you feel you still need a smaller size, consider filing a bug.

      • Anonymous

        Thank you Dr Fly – an excellent suggestion!

        Call me impatient, but I like the idea of one-click access to my programs. I resized a screenshot of the Unity sidebar to emulate 24px icons and found that they were all still easily and instantly recognisable.

        The accessibility of my applications and my productivity would be improved if there were a 24px sidebar icon option. (And while I’m on the subject – why not have the option to have the bar at the bottom of the screen? I could then have more applications showing there — so surely that would be logical improvement to the interface?)

  • http://www.benjaminkerensa.com Benjamin Kerensa

    I’m impressed by the new configuration options and hope that the Unity Team releases more options for customizing Unity.

  • Klonuo Umom

    So what?
    Worth blog post :~

    • http://profiles.google.com/nishantagrwal12993 Nishant Agrwal

      one unimportant blog post
      worth comment?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XLFWR3ODIMRTFRMRBEDDQWRTXU gobble dee gook

    i remember mark shuttleworth saying that he wanted ubuntu to be able to overtake OS X as the world’s most advanced OS. this is ONE step in the right direction. but they say that the journey of a lifetime begins with one step.

  • http://twitter.com/raulvalino Raúl Valiño

    I hope this will make it more stable. I’ve tried myunity, compiz, ubuntu tweak, and I always get the same issue. When I change the size and behaviour of the launcher, the desktop will crash within the first 1/2 hour anter starting ubuntu. After that, it’ll go smooth as many hours -even days- as i leave it on.

  • Anonymous

    Now i need to be able to change the icon theme without having a 3rd party tool.

  • http://onthetube.co.uk/ OTT

    This is brilliant! These are the exact options I change every time I install Ubuntu :D

  • Anonymous

    When Unity was introduced in 11.04 I was, liked many others, skeptical. I was used to the “old” Gnome and Windows style menu’s. It took some time before I began to like Unity. In 11.10 Unity was more polished, was more responsive and beautiful. I’m now running Unity 5.0 in 11.10 and I really think that Unity is a giant step forward! For me no Gnome Shell or Cinnamon. Mark (Shuttleworth) and his team are on the right track. I stick with Unity!

    PS I’ve read about a Ubuntu tablet later this year. If it is decent hardware (not too low budget please) I’ll surely buy me one!

  • Anonymous

    Wow! Three options!

    • John Piers Cilliers

      I was kinda thinking the same! Let’s all get so excited! Is this really cause for any excitement at all??

      • https://login.ubuntu.com/+id/R4szkb7 Jo-Erlend Schinstad

         It is not the number of options that count. I would be able to add a thousand options in one weekend. Those would obviously be nonsensical options. The difficulty is not in adding options, but knowing the difference between what is sufficient and what is too much. Obviously, you don’t have to limit yourself to the default. There are other config GUIs that you can install and use if you want more options. This is the default, and I think the choices have been very good so far.

  • http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski

    If they continue doing things like this then everyone on Ayatana can get a free hug off me :P

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TOAP2YXEUL6HBNSCRICYVVMKSY Teg

    I still find it silly that we still cannot change our fonts out of the box. There is that gnome-tweak-tool application, but that forces the user to download the ENTIRE Gnome Shell which he or she may not want.

    I end up using Ubuntu Tweak to change fonts and other things, but management of fonts should be part of the OS. Wake up Canonical!

    • Chad Germann

      I am not a Canonical Fan but i think it is fair to point out that those feature not being there is more of a GNOME issue

  • Satchit Bhogle

    Related to my earlier post, I’d like to see the decoupling of theme and icon set, like it was in GNOME2. I use the Faenza icon set, and it is recommended to use Faenza-Ambiance when using the Ambiance theme because it integrates better. However, if you change your theme to something other than Ambiance, and then back, your icon set is changed to ubuntu-mono-dark once more. This is annoying, to say the least.

    • http://jeremy.bicha.net/ Jeremy Bicha

      If you’re going to use non-default icon themes, you’ll need to use GNOME Tweak Tool to change your theme.

  • Marcelo Martinez

    Excellent!

  • Argent Zerda

    This looks promising. Right now, I’m using Fedora, but I might or might not switch back to Ubuntu if 12.04 turns out to be good.

  • Anonymous

    I wish “center left” and “lower left corner” were also options for the reveal spot.  The upper left is the most annoying place for Unity to pop out and interfere with pointing at menus and icon bars, esp. the back button on browsers.

    • Anonymous

      agree, upper left is for “close” button.

      I want to remove trash button and move “ubuntu” button to bottom left

  • Tomasz Sałaciński

    IMHO “Change desktop background” should be changed to “Change desktop settings”.

    • Anonymous

      also I would like to see “ubuntu settings” in right click on desktop

  • Anonymous

    This is the way to go!
    Keep up the good work!

  • https://launchpad.net/~grzesiek1e5 Grzegorz G.

    Better to have tabs like “Desktop”, “Dash”, etc. than “Appearance”, “Behaviour”.

    • Anonymous

      if I am new to linux I can understand what is “Appearance” and “Behaviour”, but I don’t know what is “dash”, “unity”, etc

  • http://facebook.com/domcan2 1roxtar

    I was hoping it could adjust the size of icons on the Unity launcher in Unity 2D also, but it doesn’t yet.  I would use 2D more if I could just resize the icons to be a little smaller because I like my Launcher to always be visible. I love the speed and stability of Unity 2D on my older machines.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001716324274 Christopher Prechter

    Very interesting. I am eager to see how this will improve the user experience.

  • http://twitter.com/Azthma Azthma

    It’s time for Gnome-Shell users to get back to Unity without being embarrassed! :) 
    With Multi Monitor management specs, HUD and Unity 5.0. Who would care again about Gnome-Shell or Mint Linux.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TLL2FJYJSJH6VKCI6KLSRZ3Y2E TurtleKing

    One question: Where is my slideshow background button? >:( 

  • Anonymous

    Looks like Unity is finally taking shape. With this and the HUD, I may actually end up using it a bit more now. Turning into a very interesting release!

  • Anonymous

    A good idea to always include “restore defaults.”

  • Anonymous

    No! Of course not! PARTY!

  • Anders Ström

    I don’t need to be able to change the fonts — but at least let me change the DPI. It’s ridiculously huge on the default settings on my 1366×768 laptop.

  • Anthony Venable

    Ok looks like they are at least trying to add more customization options, that is definitely a plus.

 
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