HowTo: Swap the window gadgets back to the right side of the window in Ubuntu Lucid.
The release of Ubuntu’s brand new look in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 3 brought mixed reactions, but probably none more so than the decision to move the window minimise, maximise and close gadgets from their traditional placement on the upper-right corner of the window to the upper-left side ala Apple Mac.
Many people, myself included, do not like this. To fix it and make it look like this:
…is very easy to do. Read on.
Simply open up a terminal and type in the following at the $ prompt:
$ gconftool -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string ":maximize,minimize,close"
Viola! Instant fix! But how does it work?
Gnome is highly customisable. One of its configuration options tells Metacity where and in what order to render elements on a window. In this case, the string “:maximize,minimize,close” means to render the “maximise”, “minimise” and “close” gadgets in that order, and the colon at the start means to render them on the right side of the window. If you change the colon to be on the far right, your window gadgets will appear on the left of the window.
Don’t like how the Ubuntu team have also changed the maximise and minimise button order around? Be a rebel! Change it back by replacing the configuration string above with “:minimize,maximize,close”.
Play around with it and enjoy. 
Thanks for that tip.
Do you know if you can add a “space” between any of the buttons?
Such as a space between “X” close and the others, so you don’t bump the close when maximizing.
Hmmm. Can’t say I’ve tried. I’ll look into that one.
However even if we can change it, there is a new issue with the graphic design of the Lucid buttons. There will be a visible gap in the graphic between the buttons.
There is however still the issue of the button order, as by default (due to being “Designed” for the LHS) it is now Max/Min/Close.
However, in previous versions of Ubuntu it was Min/Max/Close.
Note however, that if you correct this – via:
$ gconftool -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string “:minimize,maximize,close”
Then you will have bloody ugly buttons since the recess and gradient surrounding them was designed for the LHS layout…
Yeah, I was debating the idea of writing about that too, but saw the drama with the bitmaps, so I abandoned it.
It is here !
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string “menu:minimize,maximize,spacer,close,spacer”
I’ve noticed the recent updates now substitute the bitmap so you can happily change the order of the buttons now without it looking ugly, but the spacer is awful – why would you use that?
The spacer is there so that Close is not completely next to any other button, thus preventing accidentally closing the window when trying to maximize or minimize it. And, yes, it does look awful. Yet another bug in the new themes.
Well, actually it is because I like it very much…
The reason is, it has space between the window border and the close button X so that I will not close the window accidentally.
The rest also will make space between minimize and maximize…
It is very very nice and it return the
(menu o) back so that you will not need to use keyboard..
And this is the code:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string menu:minimize,spacer,maximize,spacer,close,spacer