May 2, 2007

Arrangement of buttons on the titlebar


For making Ubuntu Linux look like OS X, one of the most important things is to have titlebar buttons left aligned instead of their default location on the right side.
It can be done easily and regardless of the theme in use.
Metacity is a compositing window manager used by default in the GNOME desktop environment. We can change metacity's setting through "configuration editor".
In configuration editor, go to:
apps>metacity>general
and you will see button_layout. The default value is:
menu:maximize,minimize,close

you need to change it to:
close,minimize,maximize:menu

and you will see the results instantly.

9 comments:

jn said...

Hey, thanks for all your tips and info.. I had one other question.. I'd like to know how you get the OS X titlebar buttons.. I'm running Feisty and have managed to move the buttons to the left of the titlebar but now I'm lost as to getting the red, yellow and green buttons.

Thanks

"Knows how" said...

That is easy to do. Download this theme: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/T-ish+for+Ubuntulooks+Graphite+%28Addon%29?content=41732

then install it through Control Centre > themes

"Knows how" said...

The name of theme is:
T-ish for Ubuntulooks Graphite
and you may find it and similar themes in:
http://www.gnome-look.org/

I try to write something about it in near future.

Anonymous said...

Thanks but that addon needs the original pack to work and the link to the original pack is broken!

On the bright side though, I did some searching and I found a beryl theme that does the trick!

The link is:
http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/human-osx-ish?content=52808

thanks again!

"Knows how" said...

Great! happy to hear that.

DarkerNights said...

awesome. works great! just what i was looking for.

Jacob said...

Hey, thanks for the tip! Also, how do you get the digg button in the post?

"Knows how" said...

Try this for adding digg button to any post in blogger:

http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/03/add-digg-button-to-blogger-or-blogspot.html

Sam said...

With mac4lin 1.0:

Shifting the order of the titlebar buttons
The installation script will move the “traffic lights”, the minimize, maximize
and close buttons, on the left hand side of the titlebar in Metacity
(instructions for using the Emerald/Compiz Fusion theme appear in Section
3). If you want to make the change manually, press Alt+F2 and type in gconf-editor.
Press Enter or click Run and a new window should appear. In the sidebar, go to / →
apps → metacity → general. Back on the right hand side, double click on
button_layout. Delete the value that's there and type in
menu:minimize,maximize,close. Then Click OK and close the application
Configuration Editor. The buttons will now be on the left side of titlebar. To restore
the buttons to the original layout, just replace the string with
close,minimize,maximize:menu