46 Part I: Getting Started such as NFS and FTP servers. This menu has a CD/DVD Creator entry for using Nautilus to burn data CD/DVD-ROMs. A Recent Documents submenu lists all recently accessed files. • System This menu includes Preferences and Administration submenus. The Preferences submenu is used for configuring your GNOME settings, such as the theme you want to use and the behavior of your mouse. The Administration submenu holds all the Ubuntu system configuration tools used to perform administrative tasks such as adding users, setting up printers, configuring network connections, and managing network services such as a web server or Samba Windows access. The System menu also holds entries for locking the screen (Lock) and logging out of the system (Logout). Next to the menus are application icons for commonly used applications, including Firefox, the mail utility, and help. Click one to start that application. Of course, you can also start these applications from the Applications menu. You can access your home directory from its entry in the Places menu. A file manager window opens, showing your home directory with default directories created for commonly used files, including Pictures, Documents, Music, and Videos. Your office applications will automatically save files to the Documents directory by default. Image and photo applications will place image files in the Pictures directory. The Desktop folder will hold all files and directories saved to your desktop. The file manager window displays several components, including a browser toolbar, a location bar, and a side pane listing places, which resembles similar areas commonly found on most traditional file managers. When you open a new directory, the same window is used to display it, and you can use the forward and back arrows to move through previously opened directories. In the location bar in text-based mode, a box is displayed where you can enter the pathname for a directory to move directly to it. Figure 3-3 shows the file manager window. FIGURE 3-3 File manager for home folder Chapter 3: Interface Basics: Login, Desktop, and Help 47 PART I NOTE NOTE For both GNOME and KDE, the file manager is Internet-aware. You can use it to access remote FTP directories and to display or download their files, though in KDE the file manager is also a fully functional Web browser. To quit the GNOME desktop, either click the Quit button on the right side of the top panel or choose System | Quit. This displays a dialog with buttons for Log Out, Switch User, Restart, and Shut Down. Click the Shut Down button to shut down the system. Click Log Out to return to the login screen, where you can log in as a different user. Switch User will keep you logged in while you log in as another user. Your active programs will continue to run in the background. Clicking the Restart button will shut down and the restart the system. NOTE NOTE Ubuntu provides several tools for configuring your GNOME desktop, which you can access by choosing System | Preferences. These tools are discussed in detail in Chapter 8. Click the Help button on each preference window to display detailed descriptions and examples. Some of the commonly used tools are discussed in the “Desktop Operations” section later in this chapter. On the far right side of the GNOME desktop’s top panel are the user switcher icon, the sound volume control icon, the date and time, and the Quit button. The bottom panel, shown next, is used for interactive tasks such as selecting workspaces and docking applications. If your desktop becomes too cluttered with open windows and you want to clear it by minimizing all the windows, you can click the Show Desktop button at the left side of the bottom panel. The workspace switcher for virtual desktops appears as two squares on the right side of the panel. Clicking a square moves you to that area of the workspace. On the right of the workspace switcher is the trash icon that you can click to see what items are in your trash. Moving and Copying Windows and Files To move a window, click and drag its title bar. Each window sports maximize, minimize, and close buttons, or you can double-click the title bar to maximize the window. Each window has a corresponding minimize and restore button on the bottom panel. The desktop supports full drag-and-drop capabilities and combinations of keypresses and mouse clicks, as shown in the following table. You can drag folders, icons, and applications to the desktop or other file manager windows open to other folders. The move operation is the default drag operation (you can also press the shift key while dragging). To copy files, press the ctrl key and then click and drag before releasing the mouse button. To create a link, hold down both the ctrl and shift keys while dragging the icon to where you want the link to appear, such as the desktop. SHIFT-click Move a file or directory, default CTRL-click Copy a file or directory CTRL-SHIFT-click Create a link for a file or directory 48 Part I: Getting Started GNOME Applets GNOME applets are small programs that you can access from icons on the top panel. It is easy to add applets to the panel: Simply right-click a vacant space on the panel and choose Add To Panel to see all available applets in a dialog (Figure 3-4). You may find some applets to be particularly helpful, such as Dictionary Lookup; the current weather; the system monitor, which shows your CPU usage; the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor for Cool’n’Quiet processors; and Search For Files. You will need to perform basic configuration for most applets before they can be run. To do this, right-click the applet and choose Preferences to open the Preferences window for that applet, where you can change settings. The following illustration shows some common applet icons that appear to the right of the Web browser, Email, and Help icons: from left to right, Dictionary Lookup, System Monitor, Tomboy note taker, eyes that follow your mouse around, a fish, DeskBar desktop search, User Switcher, Network Connection Monitor, volume control, weather, date and time (International Clock), and the Quit button. NOTE NOTE The KDE desktop displays a panel at the bottom of the screen that looks similar to the panel displayed on the top of the GNOME desktop. The file manager for KDE appears slightly different but operates much the same way as the GNOME file manager. See Chapter 9 for details on KDE. Desktop Operations There are several desktop operations that you may want to take advantage of when first setting up your desktop. These include setting up your personal information, burning CD/ DVD disks, searching your desktop for files, and using removable media like USB drives, along with access to remote host. FIGURE 3-4 GNOME Add To Panel dialog Chapter 3: Interface Basics: Login, Desktop, and Help 49 PART I TIP TIP With very large monitors and their high resolutions becoming more common, one feature users find helpful is the ability to increase the desktop font sizes. To increase the font size, open the Font panel on the Appearance preferences located in System | Preferences | Appearance menu. There you can change the font sizes used on your desktop. See Chapter 8 for more information on fonts. International Clock: Time, Date, and Weather The International Clock applet displays the current time and date for your region, but you can modify it to display the local weather, as well as the time, date, and weather of any location in the world. To add a location, right-click the time and choose Preferences. The Clock Preferences dialog displays three tabs: General, Locations, and Weather. To add a new location, click the Add button on the Locations tab. This opens another dialog where you can enter the name, time zone, and coordinates of the location. Click the Find button and open a expandable tree of locations, starting with continent, then region, country, and city (Figure 3-5). On the Weather tab, you can specify the temperature and wind measures to use. On the General tab, you can set the clock’s display options for particular locations and decide whether to show weather, temperature, date, and seconds. Once you set your location, a weather icon will appear next to the time on the top panel, showing current weather information: To see the locations you have selected, click the time displayed on the top panel. This opens a calendar, with a Locations area with an expandable arrow at the bottom. Click this arrow to display all your locales, their times, and weather, as shown next. A house icon appears next to your home location. A world map shows your world locations as red dots, FIGURE 3-5 Selecting a location from the Clock Preferences dialog 50 Part I: Getting Started with a blue house icon showing your current home location. When you click a location entry, its corresponding dot will blink for a few seconds. Each location also shows a small globe weather icon that indicates the general weather, such as sun or clouds. To see weather details, move your mouse over the weather icon, and a pop-up dialog will display the current weather, temperature, wind speed, and times for sunrise and sunset. The clock icons for each location appear dark, gray, or bright depending on the time of day at that location. Each location has a Set button that is hidden until you move your mouse over it, on the right side of the clock display. You can easily change your home location by clicking the Set button to the right the location you want to make your home. The home icon will shift to the new location on the world map. This can be helpful when you’re traveling. To make changes, click the Edit button to open the Clock Preferences dialog, where you can configure the display or add and remove locations. The calendar shows the current date, but you can move to different months and years using the month and year scroll arrows at the top. To set the time manually, right-click the time and choose Adjust Date & Time (or, from the General panel of the Clock Preferences window, click the Time Settings button). This opens a Time Settings dialog, where you can enter the time and set the date, as shown next. Use the month and year arrows on the calendar to change the month and year. To set the time for the entire system, click the Set System Time button. Chapter 3: Interface Basics: Login, Desktop, and Help 51 PART I Configuring Personal Information To set up personal information, including the icon to be used for your graphical login, you use the About Me preferences tool. On the Ubuntu GNOME desktop, choose System | Preferences | About Me. The About Me dialog (Figure 3-6) lets you set up personal information to be used with your desktop applications, as well as change your password. Each user can set up his or her own personal information, including the icon or image to use to represent themselves. Clicking the image icon in the top-left corner opens a browser window, where you can select a personal image. The Faces directory is selected by default and displays several images. The selected image displays at the right on the browser window. You can even use FIGURE 3-6 About Me information: System | Preferences | About Me 52 Part I: Getting Started a personal photograph: select the folder on your home directory where you store images and choose a photograph or image you want to use for your personal image in the login screen when showing your user entry. To change your password, click the Change Password button at the top right on the About Me dialog. Three tabs, Contact, Address, and Personal Info, let you change more preferences. On the Contact tab, you can enter e-mail (home and work) addresses, telephone numbers, and instant messaging addresses; on the Address tab, you can enter your home and work addresses; and on the Personal Info tab, you can list your Web addresses and work information. Click Close when you’re done making changes. Desktop Background You use the Background tab on the Appearance Preferences tool to select or customize your desktop background image (Figure 3-7). You can access this tool in two ways: right-click anywhere on the desktop background and choose Change Desktop Background from the context menu, or choose System | Preferences | Appearance and then select the Background tab. Installed backgrounds are listed here, with the current background selected. To add your own image, either drag-and-drop the image file to the Background window or click the Add button to locate and select the image file. To remove an image, select it and click the Remove button. From the Style drop-down menu, you can choose display options such as Zoom, Centered, Scaled, Tiled, or Fill Screen. A centered or scaled image will preserve the image proportions. Fill Screen may distort it. Any space not filled, such as with a centered or scaled images, will be filled in with the desktop color. You can change the color if you want, as well as make it a FIGURE 3-7 Choosing a desktop background: System | Preferences | Appearance Chapter 3: Interface Basics: Login, Desktop, and Help 53 PART I horizontal or vertical gradient via the Colors drop-down menu. You select colors from a color wheel that provides an extensive selection. Initially, only the Ubuntu backgrounds are listed, but you can install the gnome- background package to add a collection of GNOME backgrounds. You can download more GNOME backgrounds from http://art.gnome.org and http://gnome-look.org. TIP TIP You can set your screen resolution as well as screen orientation using the Monitor Resolution Settings utility accessible from System | Preferences | Screen Resolution. The utility supports RandR screen management features such as screen rotation, resolution, and refresh rate. Using Removable Devices and Media Removable media such as CDs and DVDs, USB storage disks, digital cameras, and floppy disks will be displayed as icons on your desktop. These icons will not appear until you place the media into their appropriate devices. To open a disk, double-click its icon to display a file manager window and the files on it. Ubuntu now supports removable devices and media such as digital cameras, PDAs, card readers, and even USB printers. These devices are handled automatically with an appropriate device interface set up on the fly when needed. Such hotplugged devices are identified, and where appropriate, their icons will appear in the file manager window. For example, when you connect a USB drive to your system, it will be detected and displayed as a storage device with its own file system. CAUTION CAUTION If you copy files to a disk, CD, or DVD, be sure to unmount it first before removing it from the drive (right-click the icon and choose Unmount Volume). Accessing File Systems, Devices, and Remote Hosts The GNOME desktop also displays a Computer folder. Open this folder to see a list of removable devices along with icons for file system and network connections (Figure 3-8). Click the Filesystem icon to access the entire file system on your computer, starting from the root directory. Regular users will have only read access to many of these directories, whereas the root user will have full read and write access. Opening the Network folder shows a list of hosts on your system with shared directories, such as Windows systems accessible with Samba. GNOME uses Domain Name Service (DNS)–based service discovery to detect these hosts automatically. Clicking a host’s icon will list the shared directories available on that system. When opening a shared directory, you will be asked for a user and password, like the user and password required for a directory owned by a Windows user. The first time you access a shared directory, you will also be asked to save this user and password in a keyring, which itself can be password-protected. This allows repeated access without your having to enter the password every time. Burning DVDs and CDs With GNOME, burning data to a DVD or CD is a simple matter of dragging files to an open blank CD or DVD window and clicking the Write To Disk button. When you insert a blank disc, a CD/DVD Creator window will open. To burn files to the disc, just drag them into that window. All read/write discs, even if they are not blank, are also recognized as writable discs and are opened in a CD/DVD Creator window. Click Write To Disk when 54 Part I: Getting Started you’re ready to burn to disc. A dialog will open, as shown in Figure 3-9. You can specify Write Speed, the DVD/CD writer to use (if you have more than one), and the disc label. GNOME also support burning ISO images. Double-click the ISO image file or right-click the file and choose Open With CD/DVD Creator. This opens the CD/DVD Creator dialog, which prompts you to burn the image. Be sure you insert a blank CD or DVD into your CD/DVD drive first. You can also burn DVD-Video discs. For more complex DVD/CD burning, you can use the Brasero DVD/CD burner (Figure 3-10) that is included with Ubuntu and is a GNOME project (Ubuntu main repository). Brasero supports drag-and-drop operations for creating audio CDs. In particular, it can handle CD/DVD read/write discs and can erase discs. It also supports multisession burns, adding data to a DVD/CD disc. Initially, Brasero displays a dialog with buttons for the types of project you want to create. You can create a data or audio project, copy a DVD/CD, or burn a DVD/CD image file. FIGURE 3-8 Removable devices, Computer folder, and shared network folders FIGURE 3-9 Writing to a DVD/ CD with GNOME Nautilus File Manager Chapter 3: Interface Basics: Login, Desktop, and Help 55 PART I Search Tools Two primary search tools are available for your Ubuntu desktop: Search For Files and Tracker. Search For Files is installed by default and is accessible by choosing Places | Search For Files. The Tracker search and desktop indexer is accessible from Applications | Accessories | Tracker search tool. When you start using Tracker, a Tracker icon will appear in the top panel. Tracker will actually index your files, making access more efficient. The GNOME file manager also provides its own search tool for quickly finding files. As an alternative, you can use the DeskBar search applet, which also makes use of Tracker indexing. Tracker: Indexed Search Tracker is a GNOME desktop indexing search tool (www.gnome.org/projects/tracker/) that’s technically named Meta-Tracker. Tracker is turned off by default as its indexing function can be resource intensive. You can enable Tracker by choosing System | Preferences | Search And Indexing and checking both the Enable Indexing and Enable Watching check boxes on the General tab. If you find that indexing is consuming too many resources, you can turn it off by unchecking the Enable Indexing check box. You can still use Tracker to perform searches if you have Enable Watching checked. Once enabled, the Tracker applet appears on the right side of the top panel. You can right-click the icon to display a menu for selecting preferences as well as to start Tracker or pausing indexing. Tracker indexes not just by name or location, but also by metadata and content of files and directories. Indexing is performed by the trackerd daemon. To use Tracker, click its icon to open a search window, where you can enter your search and display the results (see Figure 3-11). You can also open this window directly by right- clicking the Tracker icon and choosing Search. Search results are organized into Categories in the side pane. The results for a selected category are shown in the top-right pane. Information about a selected result appears in the lower-right pane. FIGURE 3-10 Burning a DVD/CD with Brasero [...]... numbers Enter the pattern of the search in the Name Contains text box, and then select the folder or file system in which to search from the Look In Folder drop-down menu The user’s home folder is selected by default You can then elect to specify advanced options such as the Contains The Text text box for searching the contents of text files (grep), or additional file characteristics such as the file date,... you can edit the command on the command line The editing capabilities provide a way to correct mistakes you may make when typing a command and its options The backspace key lets you erase the character you just typed in (the one to the left of the cursor) and the del key lets you erase one character to the right of the cursor With this character-erasing capability, you can backspace over the entire line... access the Ubuntu help support at https://answers.launchpad.net Here you can submit your question and check answered questions about Ubuntu Ubuntu Help Center Click the Help icon on the top panel (the ? icon) to start the GNOME help browser (Yelp), which presents the Ubuntu Help Center (see Figure 3-16) The GNOME help browser supports bookmarks for pages you want to access directly Clicking the Help... document collection The GNOME help browser contents will also show a sidebar listing direct links to all the major help topics (Help | Contents), rather than the Ubuntu- specific links on the Ubuntu Help Center page These topics include Introduction To The Desktop, Basic Skills, Desktop Overview, Using The Panels, Tools And Utilities, and Configuring Your Desktop The Introduction To The Desktop topic... among available themes From the Remote tab, you can select Plain, select Plain With Browser, or use the same configuration used for your local logins On the Users tab, you can select which users you want displayed when using a face browser On the Local tab, you can choose from a number of themes The Ubuntu theme is selected by default You can also opt to have the theme randomly selected On the Security... also accessible from online sources Both the GNOME and KDE desktops feature help systems that use a browser-like interface to display help files To start the GNOME or KDE Help browser, select the Help entry in the main menu or click the Help icon on the top panel The Help browsers now support the Ubuntu Help Center, which provides Ubuntu- specific help, as well as the GNOME desktop and system man page... also access the man pages, which are manuals for Linux commands available from the command line interface, using the man command Enter man along with the command on which you want information The following example asks for information on the ls command: $ man ls Pressing the spacebar advances you to the next page Pressing the b key moves you back a page When you finish, press the q key to quit the man... return to the command line You activate a search by pressing either the slash (/) key or question mark (?) key The / key searches forward, and the ? key searches backward When you press the / key, a line opens at the bottom of your screen, where you can enter a word to search for Press enter to activate the search You can repeat the same search by pressing the n key You needn’t re-enter the pattern... TIP Using the GNOME Screensaver Preferences, you can control when the computer is considered idle and what screen saver to use, if any You can also control whether to lock the screen when idle Access the Screensaver Preferences from System | Preferences | Screensaver To turn off the Screensaver, uncheck the Activate Screensaver When Computer Is Idle check box For a desktop, two tabs appear in the Power... which modifies the type of action the command takes Options and arguments may or may not be optional, depending on the command For example, the ls command can take a -s option The ls command displays a listing of files in your directory, and the -s option adds the size of each file in blocks You enter the command and its option on the command line as follows: $ ls -s An argument is data the command might . globe weather icon that indicates the general weather, such as sun or clouds. To see weather details, move your mouse over the weather icon, and a pop-up dialog will display the current weather,. minimizing all the windows, you can click the Show Desktop button at the left side of the bottom panel. The workspace switcher for virtual desktops appears as two squares on the right side of the panel control, weather, date and time (International Clock), and the Quit button. NOTE NOTE The KDE desktop displays a panel at the bottom of the screen that looks similar to the panel displayed on the