Gnome 3.2 Settings in Fedora

So I’ve been running Fedora 16 since it was released on beta last year and I think its great, its got a clean interface, its reasonably speedy and it has a decent solid base of packages in its repos.

However, there are some small issues. For a start Gnome 3.2 takes some getting used to with the new way it has stuff laid out along with the apparant lack of customization. Tie that in with no obvious way to change more advanced settings and you’re left a bit confused and lost to begin with.

So today the one thing I am interested in introducing is a GUI editor for the default gsettings program (the Gnome settings program). Its called dconf-editor and it provides a quick way to easily access all of the settings available through the command line gsettings program.

To install just run the following;

sudo yum install dconf-editor

Once installed the first thing you will probably want to change if you are using a laptop is the bloody screen timeout. Absolute bane of my life! Fire up dconf-editor by just invoking it via a shell;

dconf-editor

Once loaded navigate through this to find the setting to change;

org -> gnome -> settings-daemon -> plugins -> power -> select the setting, “idle-dim-time” and change it to whatever setting you want. I believe it is in minutes.

There are loads of other settings available through dconf-editor, but as a word of warning. If you don’t understand what an option is or are making assumptions about what they may or may not do – don’t change them, be safe and do some research first 🙂

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