What I Wish I'd Figured Out Sooner

Although I spent a long time not liking Gnome, I've come round to it, and think it's the only desktop environment (on any OS) I can confidently recommend (I have not tried them all) (I used to be able to recommend Unity). Specifically, I recommend Gnome with Ubuntu's defaults and some additional extensions to improve the experience. Extensions Hide Top Bar — Makes the top bar only visible in the window spread / app list view. This makes the desktop cleaner and it's nice having the top of a window at the top of a screen. I prefer this to moving the top bar to the bottom because the top bar can only appear on one screen and I want my screens to look the same. No Topleft Hot Corner — It's too easy to trigger this by accident. Better OSD & Transparent OSD — I use these to improve the appearance of the volume indicator. By default it's too big, too central, and too opaque. These extensions change all of that. Volume Mixer —This lets you independ

1. Download add-ons Recommended Client Add-Ons Recommended Maps Recommended Server Add-Ons 2. Allow players to connect to your machine. In your router's settings create a new port forwarding rule. Forward TCP and UDP traffic on port 27015 to your computer. Different routers have different user interfaces, so you may have to dig a little to find the options. The settings will likely be presented to you as a of external ports mapped to a range of internal ports. Unless you have to doing something special, you just want all those values to be 27015. 3. Get players to connect to your machine. In your Steam profile settings, you should allow your friends to see your online activity. (View Profile -> Privacy Settings -> Game Details) Other players should be able to see that you are in game in their friends list. And by right-clicking on you, they should be able to join your game once you have your server running. This doesn't always seem to work, so you can allo