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Oracle Solaris 11.1 Desktop Administrator's Guide     Oracle Solaris 11.1 Information Library
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Administering the Oracle Solaris Desktop

2.  Managing User Preferences With GConf

3.  Customizing Menus

4.  Installing Themes

5.  Customizing Fonts

6.  Working With MIME Types

7.  Managing Screensavers

8.  Managing Sessions

9.  Overview of the Yelp Help Browser

10.  Improving the Performance of the Oracle Solaris Desktop System

Reducing CPU Usage

Using Theme Options

Turning Off the Display of Icons in Menus

Turning Off Panel Animation

Using a Solid Color for the Desktop Background

Improving File Manager Performance

Turning Off the Side Pane

Turning Off the Toolbar

Turning Off the Location Bar

Locking the Desktop Background and Hiding Desktop Icons

Using the Appropriate Window Manager

Reducing X Window System Network Traffic

Reducing Color Usage and Improving Display Quality

11.  Disabling Features in the Oracle Solaris Desktop System

12.  Working With the X Window System

A.  Hidden Directories

Glossary

Index

Reducing CPU Usage

This section describes preferences that you can set to reduce CPU usage by the Oracle Solaris Desktop system. These preferences are described in the following sections:

Using Theme Options

Some window border theme options load image files to draw the window border. Other options use simpler techniques to draw the window border.

The Crux window border option loads image files and can be slow on systems with limited CPU resources. To reduce CPU usage, use one of the following window border options:


Note - Metabox does not work well with inverse controls options such as HighContrastInverse. Use Atlanta with inverse controls options.


To change the window border theme option, type the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /apps/metacity/general/theme option-name

For example, to use Atlanta, type the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /apps/metacity/general/theme Atlanta

Alternatively, you can use the Theme preference tool to select the appropriate option.


Tip - You can use the Metacity Theme Viewer to measure the performance of a window border option and to preview the option. To start the Metacity Theme Viewer, type the following command:

# metacity-theme-viewer option-name

For example, to measure the performance of Atlanta and preview Atlanta, type the following command:

# metacity-theme-viewer Atlanta

Turning Off the Display of Icons in Menus

Some items in menus display an icon beside the item. To turn off this feature, type the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons false

Turning Off Panel Animation

Panels can be shown or hidden in an animated style. Panel animation can be enabled or disabled by using the Properties dialog.

If the panel has hide buttons at both ends, then clicking one of the hide buttons will cause it to slide in or out of view. If the panel is set to Autohide, then the panel slides into view when you move your mouse to the edge of the screen, and slide out of view again when you move the mouse away. If panel animations are disabled, then there will be no sliding effect. Panels just abruptly appear or disappear from view.

To turn off panel animation, type the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /apps/panel/global/enable_animations false

Using a Solid Color for the Desktop Background

Using a solid color for the desktop background reduces the number of colors used by the Oracle Solaris Desktop system.

To set a solid color for the desktop background, type the following commands:

# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options none
# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /desktop/gnome/background/color_shading_type solid
# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /desktop/gnome/background/primary_color #hexadecimal-color

Alternatively, you can use the Background preference tool to choose a solid color for the background.

Improving File Manager Performance

The file manager includes performance-related preferences. Each performance preference can take one of the three values described in the following table.

Value
Description
always
Performs the action for both local files and files on other file systems.
local_only
Performs the action for local files only. When you set a performance preference to local_only, the CPU usage is reduced.
never
Never performs the action. When you set a performance preference to never, the CPU usage and the network traffic are reduced.

To set the performance preference, use the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type string \
--set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_icon_text value

The following table describes the performance preferences for the file manager. To improve performance, set the value of the preferences to never.

Preference
Description
show_icon_text
Preview the content of text files in the icon that represents the file.
show_directory_item_counts
Show the number of items in folders.
show_image_thumbnails
Show thumbnails of image files.
preview_sound
Preview the content of sound files.

Note - You can also set performance preferences for the file manager by performing the following steps:

  1. Choose Edit → Preferences from a file manager window.

  2. Select Preview.

  3. Select the preference you want to set.

    For example, to set the show_image_thumbnails preference, select the Show Thumbnails preference option.


Turning Off the Side Pane

To improve file manager performance, turn off the side pane by typing the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_sidebar false

Turning Off the Toolbar

To improve file manager performance, turn off the toolbar by typing the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_toolbar false

Turning Off the Location Bar

To improve file manager performance, turn off the location bar by typing the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_location_bar false

Tip - You can use the Ctrl + L keyboard shortcut to display a location bar when required.


Locking the Desktop Background and Hiding Desktop Icons

The file manager contains a preference that enables users to lock the desktop background and hide desktop icons. To improve performance, disable the desktop background and hide desktop icons by typing the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool \
--set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Any existing colors or wallpapers that were applied to your desktop background remain unchanged. For example, if you had a solid green background before you turn this option off, you will still have a solid green background later. However, once the desktop background is turned off, you cannot make further changes to background colors or wallpapers until you turn on this option back again.

Note that if you disable the desktop background, you cannot do the following:

Using the Appropriate Window Manager

By default, the Oracle Solaris Desktop selects one of two available window managers when you log in, depending on the capabilities of your graphics hardware:

To minimize CPU usage, you should manually select the Metacity Window Manager. You can do this in one of the following ways: