The background is the picture, pattern, or color shown on your desktop. A lot of people use this as decoration on their computer. The Background Properties program configures your background settings. Accessing the Background Properties can be done two ways: Right clicking on the background and left-clicking on Change Desktop Background. Opening the Gnome Control Center and double-clicking Background. The top of the window shows you a small version of the selected background. Below are boxes which let you select what mode your background uses: Wallpaper Displays your wallpaper in its native form. You should choose this if your wallpaper is of the exact dimensions of your screen resolution. Centered Places your image directly in the center of your screen. Scaled Stretches your image, but keeps the aspect ratio. This will keep your image from looking funny because it has been stretched too much in one direction. Stretched Streches your image to fill your screen, regardless of aspect ratio. This could distort your images. No Picture Doesn't use a graphic as the background, but uses colors which are covered below. Below the said buttons are options to configure the colors. These only matter if you selected No Picture or your image doesn't fill the whole screen. If your image doesn't take up the entire screen, you have the option of how to color the outside of it. You can either choose a vertical gradient, horizontal gradient, or a standard solid color. If you choose a solid color, you select the color at right by clicking on Color. If you pick a gradient, you will have two options. Select the colors you wish to do and your options will be made automatically. To configure a backgrond, choose one of the following steps: Drag and drop an image into the Picture Box or click the button and select the image through the Gnome File Selector. Select the mode which you wish to use. Changes are applied automatically, so you can change quickly if you aren't pleased with the results. If your image doesn't cover the entire monitor, select your color settings. Otherwise, you can skip this step. Click Close when through with your configuration.