Saturday, May 28, 2011

Fedora 15 and GNOME 3: Add Minimize Button

Fedora 15 was just released on May 24, 2011, and it comes with GNOME 3. However, I found it extremely annoying that all windows only had the close button option. In order to minimize the window, you have to right click in order to see that option.

So here's how you can add the minimize button back to all windows.

1) Go to Activities->Applications and click on Add/Remove Software.

2) Search for and install 'gconf-editor' which allows you to browse and modify GConf configuration sources. The application will be installed as 'Configuration Editor' under System Tools.


3) Open the app and drill down to desktop->gnome->shell->windows

4) Modify 'button_layout' and set the values as ':minimize,maximize,close'

5) Now simply use your handy dandy keyboard shortcut ALT+F2 then r followed by enter. Or instead, logout and log back in.

You may also want to read my other post on how to add a shutdown option to Fedora 15.

And please see the Gnome CheatSheet for more keyboard shortcuts.

16 comments:

Alex said...

Great info, you're a life saver. Keep'em comin!

tomhwk said...

thnx.........

Unknown said...

Good, but there is an application for that; "gnome tweak tool"

Ish said...

thanks a lot.

Ed said...

Great! This fixes my biggest complaint about Gnome 3.

Javish said...

great!

Anonymous said...

cool buddy. thanks a lot. Cheers

Milos Zivkovic said...

i did this with my fedora 15 and now i cant log in into it (maybe because i am using 64bit version) i just get something vent wrong.

Agnius Vasiliauskas said...

very thanks, I really missed these buttons...

eurofalcon.com said...

Thanks very much for this, I found it also really annoying, and now it is almost perfect. If just I could place widgets on the desktop also...

Anonymous said...

Thanks. You are a big help. -Tom

CeruleanShine said...

I've tried this in Fedora 16 and it isn't working, is there something else that needs to be done? I first tried using gnome-tweak-tool and made this change, so when I went in with gconf-editor the button_layout was already set to :minimize,maximize,close, but I've tried logging out & logging back in and also rebooting but I still just have the close button.

CTurner said...

Thanks I can now have more faith in Fedora

Mohammed Imtiyaz said...

Thanks a lot, For your help

Anonymous said...

Fedora 17: there's no shell entry in gconf-editor anymore. Use gnome-tweak-tool to add the minimize and/or maximize buttons to the window titlebars.

Anonymous said...

thank you very much..
I was looking for this option..