The background is the picture, pattern, or colour shown on your desktop. A lot of people use this as decoration on their computers. 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 Mate Control Centre 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. Centred Places your image directly in the centre 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 Stretches 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 colours which are covered below. Below the said buttons are options to configure the colours. 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 colour the outside of it. You can choose either a vertical gradient, a horizontal gradient, or standard solid colour. If you choose a solid colour, you select the colour on the right by clicking on Colour. If you pick a gradient, you will have two options. Select the colours 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 Mate 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 colour settings. Otherwise, you can skip this step. Click Close when through with your configuration.