CentOS 7 – Making It More User Friendly

Cent OS 7 with Gnome 3 has a bunch of vexing issues.

Fortunately, the issues can be easily fixed.

I did a minimal install and then set up Gnome 3 desktop on it.

Icons on Desktop

But one thing I found vexing was the inability to place shortcuts for applications on the desktop, something I could do easily with my other Linux distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc, Mac or any Windows PC.

And then I discovered a solution to the problem of placing shortcuts on the Gnome 3 desktop.

Here’s how you can get application shortcuts on the Gnome 3 desktop in CentOS 7:

1. Click on home folder on desktop. The file browser window will open.

2. Next, click the Computer tab in the left navigation panel and go to /usr/share/applications. Now you should see all the applications icons in the right browser window.

3. Right click on any icon (calculator, Firefox browser, Contacts etc) that you want on the desktop.

4. After right clicking the icon, select Copy To in the context menu. A Select Destination will open up, now pick Desktop folder in the left navigation panel (via left-click)

5. Finally left-click the Select button in the bottom right of the window.

Remember the steps:

(Right-Click) Application Icon->Copy To (in Context Menu)->Select Destination->Desktop->Select

Voila, the icon shortcuts to your favorite applications should now appear on your desktop.

Tackling Panel Issue

Unfortunately, placing application shortcuts on the desktop is not the only issue with CentOS 7 (running Gnome 3).

There’s also the top panels issue.

For those struggling to add launchers to the horizontal panel bar, here’s the solution.

$ yum install gnome-shell-browser-plugin

After installing the plugin, navigate to https://extensions.gnome.org on your Firefox browser

In the search box, type Frippery Panel Favorites. After you click on Frippery Panel Favorites in the search results, a slider button will appear in the browser window. Slide it to On position and you will be given the option to Download and Install Frippery Panel Favorites from extensions.gnome.org. Click Install and you’ll have your favorites on the top panel.

You can add other extensions similarly by visiting the Gnome Extensions page on your Firefox browser

By the way, there’s also a way to edit applications in the Favorites/Panel list and the order they appear in.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Press the Windows key on your keyboard to get Overview overlay
2. Right-click any app in the left side-menu that you don’t like and remove it via the context menu
3. Open the Show Applications (nine white dots) icon at bottom of left-side menu
4. Now right-click on any application icon and select “Add to Favorites”
5. Change the order of icons in Favorites and on the Panel by dragging the applications up or down

After making the above changes, your CentOS 7 PC (with the Gnome 3 desktop) will be a friendlier, easier-to-use system than before.

CentOS 7 is a solid Linux distribution and with just a little extra effort we can make it a breeze to use.

Hope you enjoyed this post.