2.1 The Control Center

To access the Control Center, click Computer > Control Center. The Control Center is divided into the following four categories:

Hardware

Allows you to configure hardware components such as graphics cards, monitors, printers, or keyboard layout, and to set up your network devices and configure your network connection. For more information, see Section 2.2, Hardware.

Look and Feel

Holds settings for the desktop background, the screen saver, and the fonts appearing on the desktop. You can modify themes, window behavior, and styles of desktop elements, such as menus, and scroll bars. Here, you can also configure 3D desktop effects (Xgl). For more information, see Section 2.3, Look and Feel.

Personal

Go here to change your login password, or to configure keyboard shortcuts or keyboard accessibility settings. For more information, see Section 2.4, Personal.

System

Lets you configure system settings such as date and time, language, sound, or power management,. Define how GNOME handles sessions on login or shutdown, and modify the Beagle search settings. For more information, see Section 2.5, System.

Figure 2-1 GNOME Control Center

In order to change some systemwide settings, Control Center will prompt you for the root password and start YaST. This is mostly the case for administrator settings (including most of the hardware, the graphical user interface, Internet access, security settings, user administration, software installation, and system updates and information). Follow the instructions in YaST to configure these settings. Refer to the integrated YaST help texts or refer to the Section I, Installation and Setup, (↑ Start-Up ).

This chapter focuses on individual settings you can change directly in the GNOME Control Center (without YaST interaction).