[TUT] How to move Ubuntu 10.04's Window buttons

[Mark]

For some strange reason, i believe someone over at Ubuntu was under the influence during the day they did this - they've moved and rearranged the Minimise, Maximise and Close buttons to the left hand side resembling that of a MAC.

Well, with Linux being Linux we can change that and move the buttons back to where they belong.

The location is set in to a configuration file, we're going to use the graphical program gconf-editor to edit the file.

Steps

1) Press Alt+F2 on your keyboard at the same time to bring up the Run Application dialogue box
2) Type “gconf-editor” in the text field, and click on Run. Once you've done that the configuration editor should pop up.
3) Navigate to apps/metacity/general
4) Then double click "button_layout" on the right and replace the "close,minimize,maximize:" with ":minimize,maximize,close"
5) Click OK and it should change immediately. Now just simply close the editor, sit back and relax.

[bigsharn]

The reason for that, is that Mac OSX is based on Unix, as is Linux.

[Mark]

Indeed Mac OSX is based on Unix, but it's by no means open source like Unix should be. Ubuntu is Linux, which is different from Unix and should in no way be associated with Mac or it's operating system.

[Drumm]

Hoorah for that. That was something that really annoyed me when using 10.04 Virtually. This may be the start of the kill for Ubuntu. Who wants to make MUbuntu ?

[T3hRogue]

Hoorah for that. That was something that really annoyed me when using 10.04 Virtually. This may be the start of the kill for Ubuntu. Who wants to make MUbuntu ?

You mean a Macboo

[Mark]

For some reason, they kept the buttons the wrong way round in 10.10 as well, this fix still works.

I have no idea what they're smoking in those Ubuntu offices..

[Drumm]

Mweh' ArchLinux Ftw

[Drumm]

Yay, Double Post. Cheers for this tutorial, just used it to fix the buttons on my new Ubuntu Box. Now too fix Grub to allow for Windows, O.o and work out why my keyboard don't play nice with grub.
I can confirm this fix working in 10.10, and it works better than it did in 10.04.

[Guest]

When Ubuntu 10.04 was released the window control buttons were moved from the right to the left. I personally like those buttons on the right because that is what I’m used to. I’ve never been a Mac user, I was a Windows user before I switched to Linux. Both Windows and Linux have the window controls on the right. The tip you gave really helped me a lot. Thanks!

[Drumm]

Linux does not have a set list of rules. Infact Linux isn't even an OS. Linux is just a kernel. It's the GUI that is layed on top of GNU/Linux that has the window controls.