Tweaking GNOME under Rocky Linux 8.6?

Rocky Linux General
1

Hi,

I’ve been 100% GNU/Linux for more than twenty years. Since 2001 I’ve used many different distributions and desktop environments. I stopped using GNOME around Fedora 15, when 3.0 was released.

After all these years, I’d like to give GNOME a spin again, just out of curiosity. I’ve worked through the “First steps with GNOME” videos in the general help section. And I admit I kinda like it.

Do you have any suggestions on tweaking GNOME post-install? Now I know there’s many videos and blog articles on the subject out there, but I thought I’d first ask you guys here. I work in IT and I’m more interested in “functional and boring”, although a little bling can’t hurt.

Any suggestions?

2

The Rocky defaults are all you need, but you must decide between Gnome “default” and Gnome “classic” as they are very different. You also get to choose between using x11 or Wayland. These choices are made from the cog wheel, just before you enter the password to logon.

3

A very popular Gnome DE extension is “dash to panel” and there are quite a few vids about it on youtube if you would like to preview it…
And Tweaks is another good one.

4

Dash to Panel can be installed with the package gnome-shell-extension-dash-to-panel. gnome-shell-extension-dash-to-dock is an alternative.

In the Dash to Panel settings (right-click on the panel), the Applications button can be disabled, if not needed.

The extension ArcMenu is a nice menu. For Rocky 8 this version must be used, it supports Gnome 3.32. The current Arc Menu version supports Gnome from version 3.36, it can be used in Rocky 9.

In Gnome Tweaks, the window Maximize and Minimize buttons can be enabled in the Window Titlebars section.

Rocky_DashToPanel_ArcMenu
Rocky_DashToPanel_ArcMenu1770×1166 124 KB

Here are Rocky Icons for the Arc Menu button (save them as .svg files, svg files cannot be uploaded in this forum):

rocky-logo-icon-green.svg:

<svg width="256" height="256" viewBox="0 0 256 256" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<path d="M248.877 170.21C253.492 156.994 256 142.79 256 128C256 57.3076 198.692 0 128 0C57.3076 0 0 57.3076 0 128C0 162.979 14.0307 194.681 36.771 217.785L166.611 87.9445L248.877 170.21Z" fill="#10B981"/>
<path d="M225.496 210.941L166.611 152.056L74.3971 244.27C90.7025 251.799 108.861 256 128 256C167.051 256 202.018 238.512 225.496 210.941Z" fill="#10B981"/>
</svg>

Screenshot_rocky_icon_green

rocky-logo-icon-gray.svg:

<svg width="256" height="256" viewBox="0 0 256 256" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<path d="M248.877 170.21C253.492 156.994 256 142.79 256 128C256 57.3076 198.692 0 128 0C57.3076 0 0 57.3076 0 128C0 162.979 14.0307 194.681 36.771 217.785L166.611 87.9445L248.877 170.21Z" fill="#CCCCCC"/>
<path d="M225.496 210.941L166.611 152.056L74.3971 244.27C90.7025 251.799 108.861 256 128 256C167.051 256 202.018 238.512 225.496 210.941Z" fill="#CCCCCC"/>
</svg>

Screenshot_rocky_icon_gray