Maximizing screen space

This page explains a few ways you can increase the amount of screen space available in both Easy Mode and Full Desktop Mode.

• In Control Center → Display → Theme, change the font sizes to size 10, and Border Size to “Tiny” under Window Decoration. You can open Control Center as root by typing “sudo kcontrol” into a terminal window to change font sizes for applications running as root.

• You can change GTK font sizes using this guide.

• You can change GTK's theme to a compact theme. This will make applications built on GTK, like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Eclipse use less space for buttons and other widgets.

• Use the virtual desktops to keep everything organized. A very useful feature is to force certain window types to particular desktops, i.e. have one desktop for internet, another for music, another for emails etc. To enable virtual desktops in Easy Mode, use this guide.

• Install a smaller mouse theme: sudo apt-get install xcursor-themes, then choose them in Control Center → Peripheral devices → Mouse → Cursor Theme, then restart X.

• If using Thunderbird, shrink it using this guide.

• If using Firefox, shrink it using this guide.

• If using Opera, shrink it using this guide.

• In OpenOffice you can left-click on the little triangle at the right end of the taskbar and uncheck the “lock in place” option.” Move it to the side & lock it there. Edit out the icons you won't use. (Adding the Styles icon gives you one-click access to the styles palette.)

• In Tools-Options-OpenOffice.org-View, make icon size small.

• In the same panel, uncheck “Show icons in menus”. Most if not all menus will now fit into the screen.

• Use Alt-F11 to maximize a window too full screen without a title bar (Press Alt-F11 again to show the title bar again.)

• Change the kicker launch button.

• Get rid of the Launch button altogether (Hide it, then set up the Launch menu to appear when you click the desktop. This is found under Control Center → General settings → Desktop → Change mouse buttons).

• Right click the taskbar and select Configure Panel…, then click the 'Hiding' tab and set to “Hide automatically - 3 sec”, you'll have to hit <Enter> to accept as the window's quite big.

• Alternatively, check the box to allow programs to cover the taskbar. You can bring the taskbar to the front by moving the cursor to the lower left-hand corner of the screen. You may find this easier when working near the bottom of some programs–the taskbar won't keep rising up in front of the window.

• Right click on the clock and change the font to something like FreeSans to make it thinner.

• Click the little arrow next to the system tray notification area (where the power indicator is) to customise which icons are hidden.

• Right click the icons next to the Launch button and choose to get rid of them.

• Line the taskbar up against the left hand side of the screen. This make more sense because the screen is wide screen and you can spare some horizontal space but vertical space is lacking.

• Right click on any windows title bar → Advanced → Special window settings → Check desktop button → Force → Choose desktop to force it onto a desktop.

• Replace the 'quick launch' icons on the panel for desktop icons and lower the resolution of the desktop icons to 16 (Control Center → Display → Theme → Advanced → Size.

• Downloaded super-karamba so you can display some of the stats in the background rather than clogging up the System Tray. Put the clock on the desktop rather than having it in the taskbar.

• You could change the window border to 0, but this causes annoyances when resizing; if you don't resize much or don't mind using the title bar then go for it.

• Changing the theme, the widget set and removing some useless toolbars in most programs helps as well.