Ubuntu 11.10 - A Welcome December Upgrade

Ubuntu 11.10 now offers out of the box support for more hardware with kernal 3.0, including the Railink wireless adaptor RT-5390 !  I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my new HP pavillion g7-1150US which has a Railink RT-5390 wireless adaptor. This wireless chip was not supported on earlier Ubuntu versions. But I am very happy to report is under 11.10. Another wireless adaptor I use, the Zonet ZEW-25xx is also supported ! This actually has more to do with the updated v3.0.4 linux kernel. Also by installing Gnome Shell from the Ubuntu Software Center, allows near Gnome 2.x functions. Below are my tweaks, and screenshots, which are making this Gnome 3.x distro a very welcome upgrade for wireless support right out of the box. Performance is also very snappy. Notice the updated wireless signal screenlet now available. I'm using the Radiance theme with festive holiday lights wallpaper. Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome 3.x still rocks.

Tweaks which I made:

1 - Install Gnome Shell, Advanced Settings panel, Dconf-Editor, and Synaptic Package Manager from the Ubuntu Software Center.

Another tool for configuring some hidden Unity settings is Dconf-editor.

To be able to use it you must firstly install dconf-tools:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

2 - Install Chromium browser, Pidgin IM, Deluge bittorrent, Ubuntu Restricted extras, Cairo Dock, Screenlets, Audacious media player, Asunder CD ripper, K3B CD-DVD burner, and CUPS pdf printer.

3 - Remove overlay toolbars, from root terminal:

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0


4 - Move metacity title bar buttons to the right using dconf-editorTo achieve this, open Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor (or Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor). Once open, browse to /apps/metacity/general/, and in the right pane you will notice the option “button_layout”, with its value set as close,minimize,maximize:menu.

Simply change the value to menu:minimize,maximize,close. As soon as you hit Enter to commit the changes, the buttons will leap to the right-hand side.

5 - Log into Classic Gnome desktop at the login screen. to

6 - Hold the cursor over the top or bottom panel and press the left ALT button+mouse right click button to change its properties like add transparency, change width, auto hide, and add features such as shut-down buttons, weather, and other indicators.