Basic System Configuration

After getting to know GNOME and how to navigate within it in the previous chapter, it is now time to make this Linux system truly your own. The newly installed system is actually usable right away, but almost everyone feels more comfortable after adjusting a number of things according to their needs, ranging from screen resolution, keyboard layout, language, to how the system manages battery power. This chapter covers basic system configuration that you can do entirely through the graphical interface (GUI), without touching the terminal. We will explore the GNOME Settings center, how to connect the computer to a network, how to configure software sources (repositories), and how to connect online accounts like Google and Nextcloud to your desktop.

Settings: The GNOME Control Center

All system settings in GNOME are centralized in an application called Settings (in some distributions it is called GNOME Settings or System Settings). This application is the main gateway to change almost every aspect of the system without typing any commands. Inside, each settings category is displayed as a panel arranged in a sidebar on the left, while the settings content appears on the right.

There are several ways to open Settings:

Click the system status area in the top-right corner of the Top Bar, then click the gear icon in the Quick Settings panel.
Press Super, type Settings, and press Enter.
On Ubuntu, click the Settings icon on the Ubuntu Dock.

The easiest way to find a specific setting is to use the search bar inside Settings itself, or simply press Super and type the name of the setting you are looking for, e.g. dark mode. Although the panel titles in Ubuntu and Fedora are mostly the same, there are slight differences in names and arrangement because each distribution adds some of its own custom panels.

Display: Resolution, Scaling, Dark Mode, and Night Light

Display settings in GNOME are split into two related panels: Display (for the screen) and Appearance (for the look of the interface).

Display. This panel configures things related to your monitor or laptop screen:

Resolution. You can choose a different screen resolution, e.g. 1920 × 1080, 2560 × 1440, or another resolution supported by the monitor. GNOME generally selects the best resolution automatically.
Scaling. If a high-resolution screen makes text and icons appear too small, you can increase the scaling value, for example to 125%, 150%, or 200%, to make elements larger. GNOME supports fractional scaling with fractional values (like 125% and 150%), which has been enabled by default in the Wayland session since recent GNOME releases.
Refresh rate. On supported monitors, you can choose a higher refresh rate for smoother motion.
Orientation and screen position. If using more than one monitor, you can arrange their layout and orientation.
Night Light. This feature reduces blue light on the screen to make it easier on the eyes at night. You can enable it manually, or set it to turn on automatically from sunset to sunrise, or on a custom schedule.

Appearance. This panel configures the overall interface appearance:

Style. You can choose between Light, Dark, or follow the existing setting. Dark mode applies system-wide, including to applications that support it.
Accent color. Choose the accent color used on buttons, toggles, and other interactive elements throughout the interface.
Background. Change the desktop wallpaper from the built-in collection or from your own image files.
Fonts and icons (in some GNOME releases, these settings are moved to the GNOME Tweaks application).

On Ubuntu, the dock icon size, position, and auto-hide can also be adjusted from the dedicated Ubuntu Desktop panel, while on Fedora these settings are not needed because there is no permanent dock.

Keyboard and Mouse

The Keyboard and Mouse & Touchpad panels let you adjust how you interact with input devices.

Keyboard. In this panel you can set:

Keyboard shortcuts. GNOME has many built-in shortcuts that you can view, change, or add. For example, you can change the shortcut for opening the terminal, moving windows between workspaces, or running custom commands.
Input sources. Add keyboard layouts for other languages, e.g. adding a layout for typing Arabic, Mandarin, or layouts like English (US), English (UK), and so on. After adding more than one input source, you can switch between them via the icon in the Top Bar or the Super+Space shortcut.
Repeat keys and delay to adjust the repeat speed and delay when a key is pressed and held.

Mouse & Touchpad. This panel configures the behavior of the mouse and touchpad:

Primary button. Choose the primary button between left or right (useful for left-handed users).
Pointer speed and natural scrolling (the "natural" scroll direction like on macOS).
Tap to click. Enable tapping on the touchpad as a substitute for clicking.
Touchpad gestures. GNOME supports various two‑finger and three‑finger gestures, such as swiping up with three fingers to open the Activities Overview.

Language and Region

The Region & Language panel configures the system's interface language and formats. Here you can:

Language. Change the system display language. If the language you want is not yet available, you can add it, and the system will download the required language packages.
Formats. Adjust the format for dates, times, numbers, and currency according to your region, e.g. date format dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy.
Input sources. Same as in the Keyboard panel, this also allows adding keyboard layouts.

Language changes usually only take full effect after you log out and log back in. One thing to note: technical terms and application names generally remain in English, because those names are not translated.

Users and Accounts

The Users panel (in some releases called User Accounts) is where you manage user accounts on the system. If you have administrative privileges, you can:

Add a new user. New users can be created as a Standard user or Administrator (with sudo privileges).
Change passwords, disable or re‑enable accounts, and delete accounts.
Set up automatic login (Automatic Login) so that you do not need to enter a password when the computer starts. This feature is convenient, but its security implications should be considered, especially on shared devices.
Change the user profile picture.

The concepts of users, groups, and access rights will be covered in much more depth in Part VII of this book.

Power Management

The Power panel configures power behavior on the computer, especially on laptops, to save battery life:

Power Mode. GNOME provides three modes: Power Saver, Balanced, and Performance. Power Saver reduces performance to save battery, while Performance prioritizes speed at the cost of higher power consumption.
Automatic Suspend. Determine when the system automatically goes to sleep when idle, both on battery and when plugged in.
Screen blank and dim screen to set when the screen dims or turns off.
Power button behavior. Configure what happens when the power button is pressed (suspend, power off, or show a menu).
Battery percentage to show the remaining battery indicator on the Top Bar.

Network Connection from the GUI

Under the hood, networking on Ubuntu and Fedora is managed by NetworkManager, a service that handles all network connections automatically. Through the Network panel in Settings (or the network menu on the Top Bar), you can manage Wi‑Fi, Ethernet, and VPN connections without touching the terminal.

Wi-Fi

To connect to a wireless network:

Open Settings > Wi-Fi, or click the network icon in the system status area on the Top Bar.
Turn on the Wi‑Fi toggle if it is not already active.
Select the network name (SSID) from the list, enter the password, and click Connect.

Once connected, that network will be saved and automatically reconnected next time. To forget a network so it does not auto‑connect, click the gear icon next to the network name and select Forget Network. In the same panel, you can also enable Airplane Mode to turn off all wireless communication at once.

Ethernet

A wired connection is generally the easiest. Just plug in an Ethernet cable, and NetworkManager will detect it automatically and obtain an IP address via DHCP. The Network panel will show a Wired section containing connection status, IP address, and gateway. You can change the configuration, for example setting a static IP or changing the DNS server, through the gear icon next to the wired connection, then adding addresses manually on the IPv4 or IPv6 tab.

VPN

GNOME supports Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections directly from the Network panel. To add a VPN:

Open Settings > Network.
Click the + (add) button next to the VPN heading.
Choose the protocol type provided, e.g. OpenVPN or WireGuard, then fill in the configuration provided by your VPN service.

Once saved, the VPN appears in the connection list and can be turned on or off via the network menu on the Top Bar. For VPN types not built-in, the VPN provider usually offers its own application or a configuration file that can be imported.

Configuring Software Repositories

The concepts of repositories and package managers will be thoroughly covered in Part VIII. However, because Ubuntu and Fedora have important differences regarding software sources, this section briefly introduces how to configure them from the graphical side.

Software & Updates on Ubuntu

For many years, Ubuntu provided an application called Software & Updates (technically known as software-properties-gtk) as the central place for configuring software sources. However, starting with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, this application is no longer installed by default on new installations. Some of its functions, such as managing packages and updating everyday applications, are now handled by App Center, while Software & Updates itself remains available in the official repository (now updated with the GTK 4 toolkit) for users who need deeper repository configuration. If you cannot find this application on your system, reinstall it with the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt install software-properties-gtk

Once installed, Software & Updates consists of several tabs:

Ubuntu Software. Shows the active official repository selections. Generally, there are four components: main (Canonical‑supported software), universe (community‑maintained free software), restricted (proprietary drivers), and multiverse (software with licenses that are not entirely free). You can also choose Download from to change the mirror server used.
Other Software. This is where you add PPAs (Personal Package Archives) and third‑party repositories. PPAs are repositories hosted on Launchpad, often used to get the latest version of an application.
Updates. Configure update check frequency, the types of updates to install automatically, and unattended upgrades settings.
Additional Drivers. Displays available proprietary drivers for your hardware, e.g. NVIDIA drivers.
Authentication. Manage keys used to verify the authenticity of repositories.

Changing the repository list affects where applications are downloaded from, so you should only add repositories that you truly trust. Managing repositories and .deb packages via the command line, such as apt and add-apt-repository, continues to work normally on Ubuntu 26.04 and is not affected by this change.

Enabling RPM Fusion on Fedora

Fedora has a strict policy: only freely licensed software may be included in its official repository. As a result, some commonly used software and components, such as certain multimedia codecs and NVIDIA drivers, are not available by default. This is where RPM Fusion comes in.

RPM Fusion is a community‑maintained third‑party repository that provides software that cannot be included in Fedora for licensing reasons. RPM Fusion is split into two parts:

RPM Fusion free: contains open source software that still has certain licensing issues.
RPM Fusion nonfree: contains proprietary software such as NVIDIA drivers and certain codecs.

To enable RPM Fusion, there are two ways. The first is through GNOME Software: open that application, open the menu, and enable the Third-Party Repositories option. The same option is also offered during the initial setup when you first log into Fedora, and includes RPM Fusion free along with several other third‑party repositories. The second way, and the only way to enable RPM Fusion nonfree (NVIDIA drivers and proprietary codecs), is via the terminal using the following command (with dnf):

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Once RPM Fusion is active, you can install multimedia codecs (such as packages to play MP3 and certain video formats) and NVIDIA drivers from that repository. This will be discussed again in more detail in the chapters on software management and drivers.

Online Accounts

GNOME has an Online Accounts feature that allows you to connect various online services to the desktop in a centralized way. This feature is located in the Online Accounts panel in Settings. When you connect an account, data from that service is automatically integrated with GNOME applications.

Some supported services include:

Google: synchronises Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Drive. Once connected, your email appears in the Email app (Evolution or Geary), your calendar syncs with the Calendar app, and Google Drive can be accessed through Files.
Nextcloud: a self‑hosted cloud service popular among Linux users, for synchronising files, contacts, and calendars.
Microsoft 365: connects your Microsoft account for email and calendar.
Others: including IMAP/SMTP accounts for email, CalDAV for calendars, and several other services.

To add an account, click the service type, then follow the sign in process, which usually opens in a browser window. Once finished, you can choose which data to synchronise. The advantage of this approach is that all GNOME applications read from the same source, so you do not need to reconfigure credentials in each application.

In this chapter, you have mastered basic system configuration: changing the system look and behaviour through Settings, connecting the computer to Wi‑Fi, Ethernet, and VPN, understanding how to configure repositories on Ubuntu and Fedora, and connecting online accounts. All of this was done through the graphical interface, and the result is a system that is much more comfortable and tailored to your needs.

The settings you have learned here are just the beginning. In the next chapter, we will get to know GNOME's built‑in applications and how to install additional software, making your Linux system even more complete as a daily work tool.