some useful information and asks you to confirm you wish to
continue [Image D] before clicking “Install Anyway.” These
Flatpak apps then appear in AppCenter, where you can update
and remove them easily as you see fit.
>> Techies looking for more sources of apps—individual
repositories, or support for installing software packaged as
.deb files—will find Elementary less accommodating. However,
it’s simply a case of installing the relevant packages: sudo apt
install software-properties-common to trigger support for
add-apt-repository and sudo apt install gdebi for .deb files.7
MASTER FILES
Navigating your filesystem is a crucial part of any OS, and
Elementary is no different. To this end, it supplies the Files
app—which you won’t find on the dock by default. Instead, click
the “Applications” shortcut in the top-left corner of the desktop.
Here you can browse by application, switch to a categories view,
or use the search tool to find what you’re looking for.
>> Files is basically identical to its Ubuntu counterpart, with
one key consideration: Folders and files are opened with a single
click rather than a double-click (see the tweaking box on the right
if this is a problem). You should see your shared data partition
appear in the list under “Devices.” If it’s an NTFS partition, you
should find you can access your Windows user folders with no
problems, but Mac users must jump through additional hoops.
>> First, you need to change your Elementary user’s ID to
match your Mac’s. In most cases, your Mac user account will be
set at 501 or 502 (if you’re not sure, open “System Preferences
> Users & Groups,” click the lock to make changes, then right-
click your user name, and choose “Advanced Options” to verify
it. Boot back into Elementary and then open “System Settings
> User Accounts.” Create a temp user with Administrator
credentials, then log off your own user profile, and log into the
temporary one. Now open a Terminal window and issue the
following commands:
$ sudo usermod --uid 501 yourusernameE$ sudo chown -R 501:yourusername /home/
yourusername
>> Substitute your Elementary username for
“yourusername” and “501” with the same ID as your Mac
user. Next, you need to ensure your user profile remains
visible on the logon screen:
$ sudo nano /etc/login.defs
>> Scroll down and locate the “UID_MIN” entry, then
change it to your new user ID (501 or 502). Save the file
(Ctrl-O) and close nano (Ctrl-X). Restart Elementary and
boot into your own user profile—you should now have
read and write access to your Mac’s user folder. You can
delete your temp user via User Accounts or a Terminal
command ( sudo userdel -r tempuser ).8
LINK USER FOLDERS
The final stage of integrating your data folders is
to link the folders in your Elementary user’s home
directory to your data partition. You don’t need to do this
with all folders—it makes sense to keep “Downloads”
separate, for example—but you can easily do it with
folders such as “Documents,” “Pictures,” and “Music.”
>> The simplest way to do this is through Files. Open
it to your “Home” folder, then delete the existing (and
presumably empty) “Documents” folder. Now click “+”
n e x t t o t h e f o l d e r n a m e t o o p e n a n o t h e r t a b , t h e n n a v i g a t e
to the folder containing your shared “Documents” folder.
Right-click this and choose “Copy as Link.” Switch back
to t h e o r i g i n a l f o l d e r a n d c h o o s e “ P a s te L i n k .” Yo u s h o u l d
see the tell-tale arrow on the folder icon indicating it’s a
link—click it and you’ll see it now points to the shared
folder. Repeat for any other folders you wish to link in
this way [Image E].
>> One final tweak—you’ll notice that deleting the
original folder also removes its shortcut from
the Personal sidebar. Simply drag the folder on to the
sidebar to add back its shortcut.DMost system tweaks can be performed from System
Settings, but they might be hidden away. For example, need
to change the desktop resolution? Select “Displays,” then
click the settings cog in the top-right corner, and you’ll see
options based on your display’s capabilities. Want to secure
your network connection through a VPN? Head to “Network
> VPN” to impor t OpenVPN profiles from your provider.
If you can’t find the tweak you’re looking for, a range of
third-party tools can do the job. Advanced techies should
examine dconf Editor ( sudo apt install dconf-editor ), but
those with more limited ambitions—such as disabling the
annoying “single-click opens files and folders” behavior in
Files—should install elementary-tweaks via the Terminal:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip.scott/elementary-
tweaks
$ sudo apt install elementary-tweaks
Once done, open System Settings to find the “Tweaks”
shor tcut under “Personal.” Selec t this followed by “Files”
and you’ll see the switch to toggle single-click off and on.
You’ll also find options under “General” to customize the
desktop, plus an option for the Applications L auncher to
open with the Category view shown by default—as your
app collection grows, this becomes a more practical view.TWEAK YOUR SYSTEM
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