Linux Mint is one of the top free operating systems widely used in the world and currently receives the highest hits atDistroWatch.

Even though it’s an Ubuntu-based system, Linux Mint features only one panel at the bottom which looks closer to the taskbar in the Windows system, and a well-organized start menu complete with a useful Search box. It also pre-installs some proprietary software such as necessary media codecs by default so that you play mp3, mp4 or most other media files with a player right away out of the box.

The Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint 13 Maya uses Cinnamon, instead of GNOME shell, as a user interface for the GNOME-3 desktop environment. And unlike Ubuntu Unity sporting a vertical launcher on the left side of the screen, Cinnamon maintains a traditional layout with a bottom panel and a Mint menu. If you’re using this Edition, you might find these tips and tricks useful for working with the system on a PC.

 

 

   Pin Programs to the Panel

Frequently used programs can be easily pinned to the panel.

Note: In the same you can also add a program shortcut to the Desktop or the Favorites located at the left column inside Menu. The Favorites support drag-and-drop and re-ordering. See also “Enable Superbar“.

 

   Enable or Disable Applets on the Panel

An applet is a small tool or application which you can access directly from the panel for performing a task. Some applets have been enabled by default but you can disable the applets you don’t need to use or enable the ones you like pretty easily:

Note: You can also add more applets for selection by clicking “Get new applets“.

 

   Enable Superbar

In Windows 7, frequently used programs can be pinned to the taskbar (hence called Superbar) for launching the programs and their icons are highlighted when the programs are running. Likewise, an applet called “Window List with App Grouping” can be added to the panel to achieve almost the same effect.

Note: A thumbnail preview of a running program is also available in this powerful applet. Since it serves as a new launcher and running programs are indicated, you can disable these two applets “Panel Launcher” and “Cinnamon Window List”. To add a program shortcut to this new launcher, just drag a program from Menu and drop it to the launcher, and you can pin or unpin programs from the panel as well with a simple right-click.

 

   Set Preferences for the Mint Menu

Like the Windows’ Start button, Linux Mint has a Menu button where you can start doing things like running a program, looking for files, log out or quit the system and so on.

The Menu allows you to set your personal preferences with the steps below, for example:

Note: In this Settings window, you can also set Menu hover delay, auto-hide panel and more.

 

   Add a Program Shortcut from the Mint Menu

Quite often a shortcut is automatically added to the Menu when you install an application. But you might also download a program which requires you to manually add a shortcut for it to run from the Menu. This can be done without breaking a sweat.

Note: If an executable file is not accessible, try to add permission to execute the file in the Terminal, for this example assuming the file is extracted to the “Downloads” folder:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x clipgrab-3.2.0.9

 

   Set a Fully Transparent Panel

When you select a theme from Menu > Cinnamon Settings > themes, the theme may come with a non-transparent or semi-transparent panel. But you can adjust the level of transparency for the panel if you like. For example, I’ve selected a theme called ICS, and I can make it more transparent with the steps below. (Caution: changing the code incorrectly might result in a non-responsive desktop environment.)

 

   Roll Up and Down a Window

When you double-click the title bar of a window, the default setting is to maximize a window. Since there’s already a maximize button you can use for this, I always like to change the default setting to rolling up (or ‘shading’) a window when I double-click on its title bar.

Now you can roll up a window when you double-click its title bar, and roll it down by double-clicking the title bar again. Simple as that.

 

   Customize a Theme

Linux Mint (Cinnamon Edition) provides you with several settings for Themes. You can easily select a theme and get a new look for the panel, windows, icons and more in the system.

You can also make changes by selecting a cursor theme, an icon theme and other themes under the “Other settings” tab.

 

   Manage Workspaces

Linux Mint creates two workspaces by default, but you can add more and manage your workspaces pretty easily in several ways:

These shortcuts are also helpful:

 

   Hide Drive Icons on the Desktop

In addition to the Computer and Home icons, Linux Mint adds an icon to the desktop for every removable drive that you attach to your system. The icons can be hidden by these steps:

The drive icons as well as Computer and Home icons would then disappear from the desktop, simple as that. Remember that you can always access the drives from Menu > Files.

 

   Change Wallpapers Automatically

You can right click your desktop, select “Change Desktop Background” and choose any one of the wallpapers pre-installed, but you need to do it each time you want to change a wallpaper. What about changing a wallpaper automatically within a certain time interval? Try Wally.

Your wallpaper on the desktop will automatically change following these basic settings when you log back in the system (or right click the Wally icon on the system tray and select “Play”).

 

   Set a Default View in File Manager

Windows Explorer allows for users to set a default view to all folders. In almost the same way, Linux Mint’s Nautilus File Browser allows for these settings:

Other various settings, such as single or double click to open items, icon captions, list columns and preview files can be done in the same window as well.

 

   Preview Files in File Manager

The Linux Mint system has a quick previewer tool Sushi pre-installed for the Nautilus file browser. While running the file browser, you can preview text, PDF, audio and video files, and other supported documents in a single step.

 

   Change a Folder Icon

When running a Nautilus file browser, you will see that the folder icons are predetermined by the theme you set. If you wish to change a folder icon to another for it to stand out from the system-wide icons, follow these steps:

Note: You can change your custom folder icon back to the default by clicking the “Revert” button in the “Select Custom Icon” window at Step 2 above.

 

   Create an Advanced File Manager

In the Mint file system, you can use Nautilus file manager to browse most files but can only write files in your home folder /home/your_name and its sub-folders such as Desktop and Documents. If you have to rename a folder or write files outside of your home folder using the file manager, you won’t be able to but you can create an advanced file manager for this purpose.

Now you can easily access the Advanced Nautilus by pressing the shortcut key you assigned. But be careful since you can use it to delete or change any files on your system.

 

   Add or Change Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are preset in the system, but you can add new ones or change them easily. For instance, change the default shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T (Run a Terminal) to Super+R (press R while holding down the Super [aka Windows] key) by the following steps:

   To disable a shortcut, press Backspace when it shows “New accelerator…” after the step 3 above.

   Keyboard shortcuts can also be set by changing keybinding values with Configuration Editor. Press Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor, then navigate to apps > metacity > global_keybindings and window_keybindings.

 

   Terminate Unresponsive Programs

Xkill is part of the X11 utilities pre-installed in Linux Mint and a tool for terminating misbehaving X clients or unresponsive programs. You can easily add a shortcut key to launch xkill with the steps below.

Xkill is ready for use. Press the above key combination to turn the cursor to an X-sign, move the X-sign and drop it into a program interface to terminate the unresponsive program, or cancel the X-sign with a right-click.

 

   Re-start System without Rebooting

If you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Linux Mint brings you a menu to log out your system. But for some reason you might encounter that the system freezes, the mouse cursor can’t move, neither pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete can work.

Remember that there’s a shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Backspace that can bring you back to the log-in screen immediately without the need to reboot the system. That’s a time saver.

As an alternative, you can also use Alt+PrintScreen+K to do the same.

 

   Set Sound Output

If you use a PC with an integrated audio device and it has no sound when playing a media file on a player, try these simple steps to set Sound Preferences for your PC. It works for me for the audio device I have.

As the items available from the drop-down menus might differ depending on the hardware devices detected by the system, you might want to try other items in the menus to see if they work for your devices.

 

   Change or Disable Login Sound

Each time when you login to Linux Mint, it plays a login sound. If you don’t like to listen to it each time you login, you can easily disable it, or change it to your favorite sound.

Log out and log back in to check the new setting for login sound. Similarly you can try out sounds for “Login screen ready” and “Login failed”.

 

   Install Extra Fonts

Do you prefer Windows TrueType fonts to the default fonts installed by Linux Mint? The mscorefonts package containing most Microsoft fonts can be installed and configured easily in a few steps below:

How about installing more TrueType fonts? With your font files, you can manually add them into the system following the steps below:

Besides this, you can run an application such as Font-Manager to view, install, remove fonts and so on.

Note: If you like the Tahoma font which is not included in the mscorefonts package, you might want to copy the two files tahoma.ttf and tahomabd.ttf from /Windows/Fonts and install them.

 

   Install Screenlets

Screenlets are small applications to represent things such as sticky notes, clocks, calendars around on your desktop. You can launch a pre-installed screenlet from Screenlets manager, or install a new one into the manager for launching it. Here are the steps for installing and launching a screenlet, for example, WaterMark System Information.

More screenlets are available for installation from screenlets.org.

 

   Install Oracle Java Packages

Linux Mint uses OpenJDK by default, but some web services might need the Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to be installed for running the services properly. If you would like to get the proprietary Oracle Java package for your system, you can download and install it with the steps below:

At any time, you can check the Java version you’re using and configure it when necessary:

 

   Add More Useful Software

Linux Mint’s Software Manager lets you search and get free software. You can go to Menu > Software Manager, type in an application to search, download and install it. You can also go to Menu > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, type in an application name to search and install a software package from the repositories.

Besides this, you can also go to Ubuntu Apps Directory to find the software products you need. If you like a product on the Directory, just click the orange download button and it opens up in a package manager for you to confirm the install.

Alternatively, you can get the latest freeware applications by clicking the Install this now button from theGetDeb Repository after the getdeb package is installed with the instructions given.

See also our Best Free Software for Linux.

 

   Auto Mount Drives at System Startup

Linux Mint is capable of reading and writing files stored on Windows formatted partitions, but partitions must be ‘mounted’ before they can be accessed each time you start up the system. With these steps, you can auto mount the drives or partitions without the need to manually mount them for access.

In case you wish to remove the auto-mount of a certain drive or partition, you can similarly use Storage Device Manager to do the setting.

Note: If you need to identify disk partitions by label, paste ls /dev/disk/by-label -g in Terminal, or to view partition sizes and file systems, enter sudo fdisk -l. Disk Utility mentioned in “Name or Label a Partition” also gives you a glance of device numbers, partition types, sizes and labels.

 

   Manually Mount a USB Drive

A USB storage device plugged into the system usually mounts automatically, but if for some reasons it doesn’t automount, it’s possible to manually mount it with these steps.

To unmount it, just enter sudo umount /media/usb in the Terminal.

 

   Name or Label a Partition

Nautilus file manager shows the root directory as File System for your Mint system partition. If you have other partitions (or volumes), it shows them as xx GB Filesystem if they’re not named or labelled.

Using Disk Utility is one of the effective ways to name a partition easily:

The file manager should now show the partition label, such as Data-Disk, instead of xx GB Filesystem.

Note 1: If the option for “Edit Filesystem Label” is not shown, click “Unmount Volume” before hand. In case you can’t unmount a volume, try Storage Device Manager to unmount it. See Auto Mount Drives at System Startup.

Note 2: This tip is for naming a partition using Disk Utility, use other advanced features such as format, edit or delete partitions with caution as they can delete data on your disk.

 

   Auto Start Up an Application

In Windows, you can place a program shortcut in a startup folder for running a program automatically when the system starts. In Linux Mint, you can do the same in this way:

The above program will then be listed in additional startup programs. Check if the program runs automatically by logging out and back to the system.

 

   Change a Login Screen and Theme

Linux Mint offers you a Mint Display Manager (MDM) to configure a login session. You can use it to change a login screen or a theme you like in a few steps:

Under the same tab, you can choose a style “Themed with face browser”, which lists user names on a login screen and saves you the trouble of typing out a username each time you log in:

Some themes are made for Gnome Display Manager (GDM), but you can also add it to MDM with just a minor tweak:

The archived theme file is then tweaked and can be added to the MGM for use.

 

   Change Default Boot Options

After full installation, Linux Mint is set to be the default operating system to boot up if no key is pressed within a few seconds on a multi-boot system. You might want to set your preferred operating system to boot up by default. This can be done easily with Grub Customizer.

Press Ctrl-Alt-T to call up Terminal, copy following codes and paste (Ctrl-Shift-V) them inside the Terminal to install Grub Customizer.

After installation, run Grub Customizer to set the default boot options with the following steps.

Avoid changing timeout to 0 seconds if you need to select a system to boot up from a multi-boot menu.

 

   Clean Up Boot Menu

Each time when Linux Mint updates to a new Linux kernel, the old one is left behind and the boot menu gets longer. If your new Linux kernel works well, it’s safe to clean up the boot menu. Do take these steps carefully as incorrectly hiding the items can make your system unbootable. You can check the Linux kernel version you’re running by entering this command line uname -r into the Terminal.

To clean up the boot menu, it’s pretty straightforward with Grub Customizer used in the tip above.

 

   Auto Shutdown the System

A simple command can be entered in the Terminal to schedule a time for the system to shut down.

The system will then shut down within the minutes or at the time specified. To cancel a scheduled time, entersudo shutdown -c in the Terminal.

Alternatively, you might want to download and install GShutdown, which is a GUI program for scheduling a time to shutdown the system.