There are a number of methods to enable you to customize the appearance of the GNOME Desktop to suit your specific needs, as follows:
Themes are the most effective way to change the appearance of the desktop in a consistent manner. See Section 4.2 ― Using Themes to Customize the Desktop for more information about themes and how to use themes to achieve the type of desktop environment that you require.
You can customize different components of the desktop individually to achieve the display settings that you require. You can configure the desktop and applications in addition to using themes or as an alternative to using themes. See Section 4.3 ― Customizing Specific Components of the Desktop for more information.
The following table summarizes the changes that you can make to the GNOME Desktop and where you can make the changes. This manual does not provide detailed instructions about how to customize the desktop. For detailed instructions about how to use the customization tools that the desktop provides, refer to the online help for each tool or to the GNOME 2.8 Desktop User Guide.
| To change the... | Use... |
|---|---|
| Overall appearance of the desktop to use high contrast colors, low contrast colors, or large print. | The Theme preference tool. |
| Appearance of the desktop background only. | The Desktop Background preference tool and the Nautilus file manager Backgrounds and Emblems menu item. |
| Font displayed on the desktop background and in all desktop applications. | The Fonts preference tool. |
| Default font settings of the gedit text editor or Terminal application. By default, gedit and Terminal use the default application font that is specified in the Font preference tool. | The Preferences dialog for the application. |
| Appearance of icons and tabs in the Nautilus file manager application. | The View menu and the Preferences dialog in the Nautilus file manager application. |