Ubuntu Lucid Lynx was released last week. It modifies the order of the titlebar buttons so that they all appear on the left-hand side. Some people would like the buttons in another order.
This post explains how to change the order of the buttons.
Firstly, decide which buttons you want:
- Here are your choices.
- Only the top four are available in every theme. Themes which support all the button types include Crux and Bright.
Take all the names and separate them with commas. However, for the gap in the middle where the title goes, use a colon. Thus for the traditional order:
menu:minimize,maximize,close
Now open a terminal, and type:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close
or whatever order you prefer.
It has also been suggested that we might allow button order to be set by the theme, so the default theme in Lucid has the buttons on the left and the other themes have them in the traditional order.
Photo © Debora, cc-by-nc-nd.
Just so you know, the theme-based button position patch has been applied in Ubuntu 10.04. Should be useful to watch how that plays out. Seems completely logical to me, and it provides some oft-requested GUI functionality without adding any buttons :)