In the ‘Keyboard’ module, determine settings such as the repeat rate and sound events associated with your keyboard. The module consists of the ‘Keyboard’ and ‘Audio’ tabs. Use the ‘Audio’ tab to configure of an audio signal for your keyboard. For audible notification when a wrong key is pressed, activate the corresponding radio button. Exit the ‘Keyboard’ module with ‘Close’ or go the accessibility module with ‘Accessibility’. The functionality of this module is described in 2.2.9. “Accessibility”.

The mouse configuration consists of three tabs: ‘Buttons’, ‘Cursor’, and ‘Motion’. The configuration options of the ‘Buttons’ tab refer to the ‘Mouse Orientation’. Left-handed users should activate ‘Left-handed mouse’ to swap the right and left mouse buttons. Use the slider to determine the maximum delay (in seconds) between two clicks that the system should interpret as a double-click.

The appearance and size of the cursor can be changed under the ‘Cursor’ tab. Four different settings are available. Changes are not activated until the next login. Under ‘Locate Pointer’, activate an option that causes the cursor to be highlighted when you press Ctrl, making it easier to find. Under ‘Movement’, set the ‘Acceleration’ and ‘Sensitivity’ of the screen cursor.

The settings in this module affect the menus and toolbars of all GNOME-compatible applications. Select for toolbar icons to be displayed as ‘Text Only’, ‘Icons Only’, ‘Text Beside Icons’, or ‘Text Below Icons’. The default setting is ‘Text Only’.

Activate ‘Toolbars can be detached and moved around’ to allow the detachment of the toolbar from all other window elements and allow its free positioning on the desktop. This makes a grabbing area appear on the left side of the toolbar. Clicking and holding this area relocates the toolbar.

Every menu entry in any application menu can be displayed with the corresponding icon. Activating ‘Show icons in menus’ tests the settings with the provided example menu.

The module for configuring the screensaver is subdivided into two tabs: ‘Display Modes’ and ‘Advanced’. Select the screensaver in ‘Display Modes’. The ‘Advanced’ tab contains a few special options that normally do not need to be modified.

Select the screen saver mode under the ‘Display Modes’ tab. Choose from ‘Random Screen Saver’ (random selection of screen savers from a custom-defined list), ‘Only One Screen Saver’, ‘Blank Screen Only’, or ‘Disable Screen Saver’.

Select one or more screensavers from the list for the operating modes ‘Only One Screen Saver’ or ‘Random Screen Saver’. The currently selected screensaver is displayed in the small preview window. The ‘Preview’ button launches a fullscreen preview of that screensaver, which can be aborted by pressing any key. Select the previous or following screensaver for preview by clicking the corresponding triangles below the selection list.

In the last step, determine after how long the screen should be made completely black (‘Blank After’), the screensaver module should be changed (‘Cycle After’), or the screen should be locked (‘Lock Screen After’). All time references are given in minutes.

This module controls the behavior of application windows. Determine how the window should react to contact with the mouse pointer or to double-clicks on its title and define the key to hold for moving an application window.

When several application windows populate the desktop, the active one, by default, is the one last clicked. Change this behavior by activating ‘Select windows when the mouse moves over them’. If desired, activate ‘Raise selected window after an interval’ and adjust the latency time with the slider. This activates a window only when the cursor was placed within the window for a time exceeding the set latency.

Application windows can be shaded by double-clicking the title bar, leaving only the title bar visible. This saves space on the desktop and is the default behavior. It is alternatively possible to set windows to maximize when the title bar is double-clicked.

With the radio buttons, select the modifier key to press for moving a window. The possible choices are Ctrl, Alt, and the Windows key.

Determine a background for your desktop. By default, the changes made here are applied to all virtual desktop. If you do not want any background picture, click ‘No Picture’ and define a background style. The drop-down menu offers a horizontal gradient, a vertical gradient, or no gradient at all. Use ‘Color’ to define the desired colors in the color editor.

To use an image file as a background picture, drag it from the file manager and drop it in ‘Select picture’. Alternatively, click ‘Select picture’ to open a dialog in which to select the desired image.

‘Picture Options’ determines what processing steps should be applied to the selected image to adapt it optimally to the current screen resolution. The options are ‘Wallpaper’, ‘Centered’, ‘Scaled’, and ‘Stretched’.

This module determines the font to use for the desktop. In a second step, enable optional effects for the improvement of the font quality. The upper part of the dialog window shows the fonts selected for ‘Application font’, ‘Desktop font’, ‘Window title font’, and ‘Terminal font’. Click one of the buttons to open a selection dialog in which to set the font family, style, and size. The options for ‘Font Rendering’ and the additional configuration options accessible through ‘Details’ are set to optimal values by default.

The style for all control elements on the desktop and of GNOME applications is set here. Choose from various preinstalled themes. Selecting a style in the list overview applies it automatically. ‘Details’ opens another dialog in which to customize the style of single desktop elements, like window content, window borders, and icons. Making changes and leaving the dialog with ‘Close’ switches the theme to ‘Custom theme’. Click ‘Save theme’ to save your modified theme under a custom name. The Internet and other sources provide many additional themes for GNOME as .tar.gz files. Install these with ‘Install theme’.

The settings of this module facilitate the use of the keyboard for users with motion impairments. The module consists of the three tabs ‘Basic’, ‘Filters’, and ‘Mouse’. Before modifying settings, activate ‘Enable keyboard accessibility features’.

Use this module to manage global keyboard combinations. It is possible to determine the keyboard combinations to use during text input and those for objects on the desktop.

The list overview window displays a list of all currently available actions along with their keyboard shortcuts. Deactivate or change a keyboard shortcut by clicking the corresponding shortcut entry. Then enter a new shortcut or delete the current one with Delete. All changes take effect immediately. Restore the current keyboard shortcut by clicking its entry and leaving the dialog with ‘Close’.

This module allows the association of certain system events and application alerts with characteristic audio signals. The dialog box consists of two tabs (‘General’ and ‘Sound Events’). The two check boxes in the ‘General’ tab must be activated to use audio signals for certain desktop events.

In the second tab, determine which events and application alerts should be associated with which sounds. All sound associations already defined for applications are listed. Test a sound by first selecting the corresponding notice in the ‘Event’ column then clicking ‘Play’. Change the sound by clicking ‘Event’ then ‘Browse’. The dialog that appears provides a list of files from which to choose. Close it with ‘OK’.