Making a custom (Ubuntu) Start Menu button under GNOME

Trying to make my Mother-in-Law's transition from Windows XP to Ubuntu, I'm trying to customize Ubuntu so that is as visually similar Windows as possible.


I found this excellent write-up at www.natewelch.com

This is a quick little how-to for GNOME users to have a Windows-esque start menu button instead of the default "Applications/Places/System" combo, or the somewhat ambiguous icon-only "Main Menu" option. It's helpful if you want to maintain a similar environment to your Windows setup or if you or someone you know is transitioning over to Desktop Linux from Windows.

For myself, I have a single bottom GNOME panel with the "Start" menu on the left, then a series of "Quick Launch" application launcher icons, then a "window list" (the buttons representing open windows), a notification area (system tray showing certain statuses, such as battery life, network connections, etc...) and finally a clock/weather combo. This is very much like most Windows setups except the panel menu choices didn't quite match the "Start" menu I was so used to. Here's how to remedy that:

1. Make an image that you want to use as a start menu (download mine at the bottom of this article). It can be anything you want but should be somewhat horizontally or vertically oriented depending on the type of panel you'll be placing it on. Don't worry about the original's size as it will scale down nicely (mine's 350 pixels, 17KB). Lastly, make the background transparent to allow the underlying panel color/background to show through.
2. Save the image as a transparent PNG file somewhere in your home directory. I personally have a Pictures/GUI subdirectory just in case I ever reinstall my Linux, I have all my GUI tweaks, wallpapers, etc... right there.
3. If you haven't done so already, add a "Main Menu" to your panel by right-clicking on an empty area on the panel and selecting "Add to Panel". There are two types of menus there - you want to pick the one represented by a single icon of the Ubuntu logo (or whatever your Linux distro uses as a default image). Also remove the Applications/Places/System menu from your panel if you have one of those set.
4. To set the custom menu graphic, you need to open the Configuration Editor under the "System Tools" menu - or for you hardcore types, "gconf-editor" at the command line. Go to apps->panel->objects and you'll see a series of object_x subitems. Click through them until you find the one where the value for "object_type" is "menu-object". Check the "use_custom_icon" option and then set the "custom_icon" value to the path to your custom button graphic, i.e. "/home/username/Pictures/ubuntumenu.png". The graphic should update immediately.
5. For an added touch, add a "Separator" to your GNOME panel to partition it off from the rest of the panel, as seen in the screenshot above.

For the rest of the article, jump over to http://www.natewelch.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=41 for more...