I've just setup a Ubuntu system as my main setup. Everything is working great and I'm finding that I prefer to spend most of my time at the command line, but using Gnome for things does come in handy sometimes. My issue is that I'm not sure how to...keep the two in sync. For instance, I have programs that I've installed that I run from the command line but don't show up anywhere in my Gnome menus. And, is it ok to make system changes from the command line and make others from the Gnome environment? Will that screw things up or will Gnome realize the changes I've made (i.e. to my wifi card).

Is there any information I could read relating to this issue?

Linux unlike some other OSes has a clear seperation between a GUI and the rest of the system. Things like wireless configuration are not GUI dependent so you could configure them from the CLI, GNOME or any other WM or DE and the whole system should recognise the changes you make. Many text based programs do not show up in the GNOME menus, but you can add these using the alacarte menu editor if you wish.

Tip:

The Gnome menu items are kept under /usr/share/applications.

The menu "shortcuts" have a ".desktop" extension. You can copy one and change it's contents to run whatever application you like.

Thanks a lot to both of you, that was exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

I'm really looking forward to my using my new setup.