If the computer is running Windows you need to restart the computer and then, immediately after startup, select Linux on the boot menu. (Due to some problems with the graphics card it could be necessary to power down the computer before restarting it; try that if you experience problems.) Select the system to boot with the arrow-keys and hit RET. The GNOME login screen should show up after a few minutes.
Your user name is constructed with lower case letters and digits as follows: two letters from your first name, four letters from your family name, and two digits for the day of birth (within the month). As an example Albert Einstein, born on March 14, 1879, would have the user name aleins14.
Type in your user name and password. If everything is correct the GNOME desktop will come up. You are now logged in. There is a few things to note about the screen that appears:
You have two panels, one at the top and another at the bottom. Various properties of the bottom panel may be changed by using the right mouse button and chosing among the submenues..
At the top, to the left you find three menus: Applications, Places, and Systen. To access any of the items, click the left mouse button, move the mouse and click again.
Clicking on the house symbol starts the nautilus file manager for your home directory.
Clicking on the terminal symbol starts a gnome-terminal with a shell. Try that now! A shell is a command-interpreter that runs in a terminal (or terminal emulator). To give commands to a shell is the traditional way of using a UNIX system. You can now start to type commands into the window. Some aspects of the shell are discussed in Chapter 4.
To the right in the bottom panel is a miniature view of the four different Workspaces (or desktops) that by default are available. You change Workspace by clicking in the "Workspace Switcher" to the right in the lower panel or by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Left or Ctrl-Alt-Right.
Changing the password is done with passwd. Type passwd in the shell, you will be prompted for old and new password.
Start mozilla from the prompt:
$ mozilla http://www.tp.umu.se/stud-intro & |
When using the online documentation it is handy to be able to copy directly from the browser to the shell or to emacs. To do that: place the cursor with the left mouse button, move the mouse with the left button pressed down, and release the button at the end of the region. The selected region is then colored differently from other text. To copy that region, position the mouse at the point for insertion and press the middle mouse button.
See Chapter 9 before trying to access the internet outside the university.
To log out select "Quit" from the "System" menu. You get a dialog box to confirm this. If you click in the "Save current setup" check-box your changes to the GNOME configuration, as e.g. buttons in the panel, are saved. Otherwise the changes to the GNOME desktop are lost.
On the GNOME login screen, the "GNOME Desktop Manager", you can reboot or shutdown the computer by selecting the appropriate action from the "Options"-menu.