Hi there,
I was wondering if I could integrate the Unity Tweak Tool into the System Settings.
So I hit duckduckgo with different terms but couldn't find anything :-(

My question is: Is it even possible? And if so, how do i do that?

maybe it is possible, but it is against the philosophy behind unity, which basically tries to hide everything "confusing, expert-only" from the user.

many people install ubuntu (or something with unity) and hit that wall, because one of the reasons they wanted to use linux is because it's so configurable.
well not with unity anymore. if you want to be in control, you have to change distros or at least dektop environments.
then you won't have to install a "tweak tool" to be able to tweak your system.

PS: Grüsse nach meiner Geburtsstadt Köln!

Also you should be aware that the basic tools that are used in scripts for Ubuntu Tweek are all available if not already on your box.

The difference is that you would need to learn to use the tools and that will take time.

The advantage is, and you will find this well documented by the many help threads on all Linux related forums, is that all applications with the word tweek in them are also very good at screwing your system rather spectacularly.

They are best avoided.

To be honest, it is exactly which at first kept me from just installing Ubuntu, ondoho. This decision lead me to reading articles and watching videos to learn what linux is really about.
I gave some distros a try (Mint, elementary, Mageia and Ubuntu) and was pretty excited by every single one. Which made the decision kind of hard. In the end, I opted for Ubuntu because I wanted to use a "next gen desktop" with apparent differences to Windows (there are some other reasons as well). There is a story (a positive one) regarding Linux Mint but a don't want to go too off topic :-)

Do these tools you mentioned involve using the terminal? I'm not scared by using it, but I honestly think on a modern system like Ubuntu Unity this shouldn't belong to the "daily business" Where can I read about them?

Well, I felt there would be a set back by using a tweak tool. I'm aware of that risk but I'm willing to take it at the moment

PS: Grüße zurück! Wohin hat es dich denn verschlagen, wenn man fragen darf?

take a look at distrowatch (link in my previous post) to get an idea of how much is available.
i think nobody starts using linux only after they learned everything about it, so just get your hands dirty.
i agree that ubuntu/unity looks good but you really have to ask yourself if that's all you want, and if you're happy to just accept the default design.
most operating systems only start revealing their weaknesses when you start changing things.

i could recommend crunchbang; it has a distinctive minimalistic design but is highly configurable (*), and usually classified not for noobs but not too difficult either.
the good thing is, it's based on debian stable and is thus stable, but sometimes doesn't like newer hardware.

almost any distro can be tried live first, without installing it.
i always have a couple of old usb sticks around to copy an .iso to...

so, yep, blah blah, just try it and you 'll be surprised how much better than ubuntu linux can be!

PS: nach finnland. ja, genau. aber linus torvalds lebt ja in kalifornien.

(*) actually "highly configurable" means that it is built in a way that you can change things; it's not accomplished by some magical gui, but by NOT using restricting and bloated software or, indeed, any desktop environment.

On-topic: Tweaking Tools can break your system, keep away from them. Integrating the Unity Tweaking Tool into System Settings MAY be possible,
but isn't encouraged neither by Canonical nor by users. Lesson learned

Off-topic: I know distrowatch. I'm checking it daily and I'm really stocked by linux' diversity.
After learning about Linux in generell and Mint in particular I took an old laptop sitting in the basement,
backed up some data and installed Linux Mint. Used it and noticed that Cinnamon was the wrong decision
(because of poor performance), installed XFCE. I got very happy how much I could customize and did so.

But I wanted more than the usual desktop layout I already knew from Windows so tried out some distros via USB/ VM
and decided just to install Ubuntu on my old harddrive (mounted in my PC but not formatted) and start messing around.
This is where I am now, getting my hands dirty

So one could say these are my baby steps. If I fall, I will ditch Ubuntu and try another one. As long as my PC remains usable
(which it does, Win 8.1 runs great on it) I don't see a problem in switching the Linux distro until I find one I can settle on for some years.

In conclusion it seems Ubuntu/ Unity isn't the distro which suits me best but before ditching the whole thing I will give Gnome a try.
I surely will check out crunchbang and I also have a ISO of Manjaro with openbox waiting to be given a shot.

Yes, much blah blah indeed But thanks to both of you for helping me out. I think discussions like these are key to my "project: linux", finding the right distro

We all need to find what we want.

I started with Ubuntu. Don't even recommend it anymore. They are getting a bit strange in the way they do business.

Xfce is what I use. Under Mint it would be pretty much the same as Xubuntu. This is all right but does not show Xfce as the Xfce folks put it out. If you check you will find that it is infested with a lot of Gnome "improvements" that actually make Xfce hard to configure.

Most of the serious distros that have been based on Ubuntu have switched to some other base, generally Debian due to built in restrictions on configuration of the system. CrunchBang is a good example of this.

Manjaro is a very nice distro, based on Arch, and they have a very nice default OB layout.

You will be able to do more with Gnome on just about any distro other than Ubuntu. Unity was intended to be an extension for Gnome Shell. The Gnome project would not include it with the copyright for a default extension for their project to be under a different outfit (Canonical). Ubuntu took their dolls and stomped off home and developed Unity as a stand alone. It may well be better than it would have been if an extension of Gnome Shell but the upshot is that they do not make the integration of Gnome usage under Ubuntu a priority at all.

You may want to try Fedora with Gnome. Most of the early extensions for Gnome Shell were developed there or by Fedora users. Debian Stable (Wheezy) uses Gnome by default.

You should keep in mind that some hardware really does require non-free firmware or drivers as defined by the Free Software Foundation. Some of these are included in the Linux kernel (firmware). It is open source, it has some copyright or other license clauses that doesn't pass FSF standards. Many distros try to follow those standards as closely as they can. Debian strips those firmware components from the kernel they deliver by default, like several other distros, but make them available in repos (non-free and contrib).

This means that the default install of some distros may not run correctly on your hardware OTB.

There is, in the case of Debian, a Live CD that is put out by the same folks that put out the Official Live media but is not Official at all that does include all of that sort of thing.
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/un...-live+nonfree/

Any distro that lacks some of these packages will be slightly harder to install but the packages are available for any Linux distro in one way or another.

More and more distros no longer need such packages anyway as the FOSS firmware and drivers are much more compatible with hardware all the time. My old box needed the non-free firmware for Debian Squeeze (Debian 6) but not for Wheezy (Debian 7).

I am a Debian user so know much more about it than other distros. Please don't take this a a sales pitch for Debian. I like it, I use it. I normally have several installs and many are not even in the Debian family (APT using distros are all Debian based).

I do recommend using distros that are at the base of GNU/Linux "branches" because they aren't reconfigured by someone else adding a layer of complexity to your configuring them to exactly what you want. That said, respins are nice simply because they are configured by some one else so you don't need to if you like the way it is done.

You can learn a lot about configuring a DE new to you by looking at the config files in respins. I learned a lot about OB configuration from Manjaro. As a Xfce user OB is not real familiar to me and I appreciated the chance to look at what they had done. They do nice work.

The difference that matters in the different "branches" is package management. I do recommend finding the one you like the best and sticking to it for long enough to become proficient with it. Once you do that the others are easy to pick up because while they are very different in commands used they all do the exact same things. They have to install the binary packages in the correct places in the file system.

Most have gui applications to do this very simply for the user. One of the main strengths of GNU/Linux is, however, a robust cli. All package management systems screw up. Think of the many Window updates that have broken Windows installs on thousands of Windows machines.

With the GNU/Linux cli it is almost never needed to reinstall. Instead you can fix the problem even if you can't boot to the desktop.

This is the reason that MS has been redesigning their inadiquate cli for some time now.

Learning to use the package manager in cli is well worth the effort and you will find that it is faster in most cases. It is the primary tool for system repair in most cases so it is well worth getting comfortable with.

Having started using computers with MSDos this was not hard for me to understand. The degrading of the cli by MS was a major factor in my abandoning Windows for GNU/Linux.

Hehe, would be nice if I had to worry about new hardware issues

Think I didn't get my point across concerning terminal. I'm not scared or anything when it comes to using terminal, used DOS myself in my early days
(started using Win 3.11 when I was a small boy). But I think it's more time consuming having to remember how to use terminal
(e.g. having to remember certain commands etc.) than using a graphical menu to adjust a bunch of settings
(where one just has to remember where the starter for that menu can be found).

I will keep in mind what you have told me and try to be more "open" when it comes to using terminal in the future.
Every single one of the few distros I tried made for a very good experience, so the process of finding the right one is a very fun one. I just hope the search doesn't take too long

Distros I'm going to try out in the near future:
- Debian
- Fedora
- Arch
- Crunchbang
- Manjaro

I feel like Indiana Jones any suggestions?

One suggestion if you really want a distro that attemps, very well, to keep you out of a terminal is to give one of the Mandrake decendents a whack. This would be either Mandriva or Mageia.

The Mandrake Control Center is probably the best gui for system management around for any OS put out by any one or any company. Now, of coarse known as the Mageia or Mandrake Control Center.

Mandrake was a fork of the Red Hat branch in 98 and was the first GNU/Linux to make a serious, and I think the best, attempt at "user friendlyness". Both existing offspring carry on that tradition very well I am sure although most of my recent experience is with Mageia.

On the other hand you may want to give Slackware a chance too. Don't expect a lot of gui tools there. Just a very solid system. Not a big "name" but also one of the oldest distros around. Debian, Slackware and Red Hat are all now over 20 years old. I think you will find that they all will be around for a long time to come.

Unity is more configurable now than it has ever been. I fail to understand why it matters if the tools to do so have to be installed by default or not. The same is true with Gnome, so this is not just an Unity thing. With Linux you can do just about anything. But the tools to do so are not always there by default. The important thing is that the tools are there and usually easily installed.