Gnome

To change the colour of the fast user switching applet [and gnome panel], open the file to edit the colours using:

gedit .gtkrc-2.0

Then add these lines into the file:

style "modpanel"
{
  fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"
}
widget "*PanelWidget*" style "modpanel"
widget "*PanelApplet*" style "modpanel"
widget "*fast-user-switch-applet*" style "modpanel"

Now run this code to reload the panels:

killall gnome-panel

And you've got modded panels. Just replace the 3rd line with whatever colour you'd like the text to be.

Firefox uses <Ctrl>Tab</ctrl> and <Ctrl><Shift>Tab</shift></ctrl> for switching between tabs. Eclipse at least lets you assign these same keybindings to its tabs. Wouldn't it be nice if gnome-terminal would allow the same thing? No such luck.

The symptom, as described by Daniel DiPaolo:

• Run gconf-editor from the command line
• Change the key /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme from "Default" to "Emacs"
• Restart Firefox

All the settings you can tweak by running gconf-editor, you can also access in scripts or on the command line using gconftool. Refer to the directory-like structure of gconf-editor or peek in ~/.gconf to find the setting you're looking for.

Get the value of a Gnome setting

Set the value of a Gnome setting

Install VNC packages

On the local machine or your desktop:

Enable Remote Desktop

On the remote machine or your laptop:

Remote Administration

This is much like rdesktop functionality.

Instantaneous Multihead Setup

Position your laptop to the left of your monitor and open a magical passageway for your mouse and keyboard: