Ubuntu Server Guide

Linux has very little "eye candy". There are many different things that can be done to the system to have an interface like the graphic effects. It's not necessary to actually do anything important, but they make the desktop look great. In your Ubuntu install, there are ways to improve how it looks and works better visual effects.

By default Ubuntu has some visual effects on the system. Go to System> Preferences> Appearance. Click the Visual Effects tab at the top of the screen. This will give you several options with no effects, normal activity, or additional effects. You must have a graphics card that handles the added effect if they are used.

If you want to be "spinning cube" you've seen on YouTube video, you need to install Compiz Fusion from the repository as well as Compiz Config. Start the configuration program to enable or disable the action. Turn on Compiz and enjoy all the effects that this program can do. It should be more than enough for everyone.

You might notice that other Ubuntu users seem to have a completely different look on their PCs. Some have taken the custom theme to make things look different. At other times they are using different interface altogether. There are KDE and XFCE version of Ubuntu and Gnome, which is the default one. If you want your desktop to look like these, you must install on your system desktop, or you can reinstall Ubutnu with Xubuntu or Kubuntu.

One thing that happens to many users is to be noted that the performance will go down a bit when you use too much influence. This happens on older machines. If it is causing problems on your system, you may have to disable some of the features of Compiz so that your computer will be so slow.