Tales of the Yellow Dog Pt. 6: Makeover

Welcome back for the ongoing saga of Tales of the Yellow Dog where we attempt to outline a user-friendly guide to running Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3.

If you have been following our past editions, you now have Yellow Dog Linux installed on your system. The question remains, ‘What now?’ Well, this is just the beginning.

Make sure that you plug your USB Mouse and Keyboard into the PS3 to utilize your new OS, otherwise you won't be doing much with it. Yellow Dog comes pretty bare bones. You are going to have to learn some tricky things to install supplemental software like plugins and such to get your baby up and rolling.

First off familiarize yourself with the OS by clicking and right clicking around the OS. Most of your learning will be through exploration. The more you futz with things, the more you know.

For a graphic OS, Yellow Dog Linux is a cross between Mac OS and Windows. Located at the upper side of the screen is your dock-like toolbar called a Shelf that houses the “Start” Main menu, thumbnails of your multiple desktops, quicklaunch programs, and a few Gadgets that will do various jobs for you. Right click anywhere on the shelf to pull up an options menu that allows you to customize the look and feel of the Shelf. You can move the Shelf to any side of the screen or even configure multiple shelves. To add a Shelf, go to the Main menu located on the left of the Shelf and scroll down to configuration then to Shelves.
Main--> Configuration--> Shelves.

There you will be able to add a shelf, and configure the position on screen, the size, and the contents. As an example of working with multiple shelves, you may want to have all of your quicklaunch programs on the upper Shelf, while placing your Desktop Thumbnails on the bottom. The possibilities are endless.

Now that you are familiar with how the shelf works, you may want to redecorate your digs. Click the Main menu on the Shelf and click on Configuration then Theme.
Main --> Configuration --> Theme.
Here you can try out the alternate theme called Bling-Bling. It’s awful purdy and looks dipped in gold.

Next up, change that dreadful wallpaper. Right click on your desktop and click Change Desktop Background. You will see a bunch of system wallpapers that are pretty decent. To complement the gold of the Bling-Bling theme, I chose Tentacles, for a soothing green background, with lovely lines that stretch from corner to corner.

Now that your makover is complete, feel free to play around with your new OS. It's quite flexable, and you can configure just about everything to your liking. Try creating folders on your desktop and assigning badges to them, it's tons of fun.

Join us next time for Tales of the Yellow Dog: Get Yourself Connected, where we introduce you to the internets.