Some people prefer their min,max,close window buttons to be on the left – mac style.
Somehow I managed it then forgot how I did it so when I finally found how to do it AGAIN!, I thought I’d share it.

GNOME calls this “metacity button layout”.

From a terminal window, type gconf-editor.

Now navigate to apps/metacity/general and change the button_layout value as required.
The colon (:) indicates the left-side and right-side divider.

So, Windows style would be menu:minimize,maximize,close and Mac style would be close,minimize,maximize:menu.