Mandrakesoft Mandrakelinux user guide

Discovering Mandrakelinux

Mandrakelinux 10.1

http://www.mandrakesoft.com

Discovering Mandrakelinux: Mandrakelinux 10.1

Published September 2004 Copyright © 2004 Mandrakesoft SA by Camille Bégnis, Christian Roy, Fabian Mandelbaum, Roberto Rosselli del Turco, Marco De Vitis, Alice Lafox, John Rye, Wolfgang Bornath, Funda Wang, Patricia Pichardo Bégnis, Debora Rejnharc Mandelbaum, Mickael Scherer, Jean-Michel Dault, Lunas Moon, Céline Harrand, Fred Lepied, Pascal Rigaux, Thierry Vignaud, Giuseppe Ghibò, Stew Benedict, Francine Suzon, Indrek Madedog Triipus, Nicolas Berdugo, Thorsten Kamp, Fabrice Facorat, Xiao Ming, and Snature

Legal Notice

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duplicating or distributing this manual in whole or in part, you explicitly agree to conform to

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reproduced, duplicated and distributed copies.

• That the “front cover texts” below, About Mandrakelinux, page 1, and the

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• That this manual, speciﬁcally for the printed format, is reproduced

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Front-cover texts

Mandrakesoft October 2004

Tools Used in The Making of This Manual

This manual was written in XML DocBook. The set of ﬁles involved were managed using

Borges (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/doc/project/Borges/). The XML source ﬁles

were processed by xsltproc, openjade and jadetex using a customized version of Norman

Walsh’s stylesheets. Screen shots were taken using xwd or GIMP and converted with convert

(from the ImageMagick package). All these programs are free software and are available in

your Mandrakelinux distribution.

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1. About Mandrakelinux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1. Contacting the Mandrakelinux Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2. Join the Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.3. Subscribe to Mandrakeonline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.4. Purchasing Mandrakesoft Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.5. Contribute to Mandrakelinux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2. About this Quick-Startup Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

I. Installing Mandrakelinux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1. Installation Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2. Before Installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

2.1. Conﬁguring your BIOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2. Creating a Floppy Boot Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3. Supported Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3. Installation with DrakX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1. The Mandrakelinux Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.2. Choosing your Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.3. License Terms of the Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.4. Installation Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.5. Conﬁguring the Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.6. Partitioning Your Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3.7. Multiple CD-ROM Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

3.8. Root Password. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

3.9. Adding a User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

3.10. Installing a Bootloader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3.11. Checking Miscellaneous Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3.12. Installing Updates from the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

3.13. It’s Over! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3.14. How to Uninstall Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

II. Discover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X. . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

4.1. Where’s my...? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.2. A Brave New World! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

5. Linux for Beginners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5.2. The Boot-Loader Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5.3. Getting Ready for your Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5.4. Beginning your Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5.5. Using your Graphical Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

5.6. Logging Out of your Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

6. Where to Get Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6.1. Mandrakelinux-Speciﬁc Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6.2. GNU/Linux Useful Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

III. Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

7. Using KDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

7.1. Discovering the K Desktop Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

7.2. Personalizing your Desktop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7.3. KDE Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

8. Konqueror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

8.1. Managing your Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

8.2. Browsing the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

9. Writing E-mails with KMail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

9.1. Conﬁguring KMail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

9.2. KMail’s Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9.3. Composing a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

10. Ofﬁce Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

10.1. Word Processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

10.2. Spreadsheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

List of Tables

8-1. Konqueror Sidebar Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8-2. Konqueror’s Web Browser Tool Bar Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

9-1. KMail’s Toolbar Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

9-2. Message-Compose Toolbar Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

10-1. Suggested Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

List of Figures

2-1. The Rawwrite Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3-1. Very First Installation Welcome Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3-2. Available Installation Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3-3. Choosing the Default Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

5-1. The Mandrakeﬁrsttime Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5-2. The Login Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

5-3. The KDE Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

5-4. KDE File Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5-5. KDE’s Virtual Desktop Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

7-1. The KDE Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

7-2. The KDE Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

7-3. Changing KDE’s Color Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7-4. Changing KDE’s Background Wallpaper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

7-5. Available Screen Resolutions List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

7-6. Accept New Resolution Settings? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

8-1. Konqueror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

8-2. Konqueror as a Web Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

8-3. Konqueror’s Bookmarks Manager Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

8-4. Konqueror’s Browser Tabs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

8-5. Plugins Settings under Konqueror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

9-1. Setting General User Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

9-2. Setting the Outgoing Mail Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

9-3. Conﬁguring a POP3 Mail Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9-4. Mail Client Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

9-5. The Message-Compose Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

10-1. OpenOfﬁce.org Writer’s Main Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

10-2. Rows, Columns and Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

10-3. Simplifying Data Entry Using Auto-Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

10-4. Using a Function in a Formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

10-5. Choosing the Chart Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

10-6. A 3D Chart Inside the Spreadsheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

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Preface

1. About Mandrakelinux

Mandrakelinux is a GNU/Linux distribution supported by Mandrakesoft S.A. which was born on the Internet in 1998. Its main goal was and still is to provide an easy-to-use and friendly GNU/Linux system. Mandrakesoft’s two pillars are open source and collaborative work.

1.1. Contacting the Mandrakelinux Community

The following are various Internet links pointing you to various Mandrakelinuxrelated sources. If you wish to know more about the Mandrakesoft company, connect to our web site (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/). You can also check out the Mandrakelinux distribution web site (http://www.mandrakelinux. com/) and all its derivatives.

Mandrakeexpert (http://www.mandrakeexpert.com/) is Mandrakesoft’s support platform. It offers a new experience based on trust and the pleasure of rewarding others for their contributions.

We also invite you to subscribe to the various mailing lists (http://www. mandrakelinux.com/en/flists.php3), where the Mandrakelinux community demonstrates its vivacity and keenness.

Please also remember to connect to Mandrakesecure (http://www.mandrakesoft. com/security). It gathers all security-related material about Mandrakelinux distributions. You will ﬁnd security and bug advisories, as well as security and privacy-related articles. A must for any server administrator or user concerned about security.

1.2. Join the Club

Mandrakesoft offers a wide range of advantages through its Mandrakeclub (http://www.mandrakeclub.com):

• download commercial software normally only available in retail packs,

such as special hardware drivers, commercial applications, freeware, and demo versions;

Preface

• vote for and propose new software through a volunteer-run RPM voting

system;

• access more than 50,000 RPM packages for all Mandrakelinux distributions;

• obtain discounts for products and services on Mandrakestore (http://

store.mandrakesoft.com);

• access a better mirror list, exclusive to Club members;

• read multilingual forums and articles.

By ﬁnancing Mandrakesoft through the Mandrakeclub you will directly enhance the Mandrakelinux distribution and help us provide the best possible GNU/Linux desktop to our users.

1.3. Subscribe to Mandrakeonline

Mandrakesoft offers a very convenient way to keep your system up to date automatically, keeping away bugs and security holes. Visit the Mandrakeonline Web site (https://www.mandrakeonline.net/) to learn more about this service.

1.4. Purchasing Mandrakesoft Products

Mandrakelinux users may purchase products on-line through the Mandrakestore (http://store.mandrakesoft.com/). You will not only ﬁnd Mandrakeli- nux software, operating systems and “live” boot CDs (such as Move), but also special subscription offers, support, third-party software and licenses, documentation, GNU/Linux-related books, as well as other Mandrakesoft goodies.

1.5. Contribute to Mandrakelinux

The skills of the many talented folks who use Mandrakelinux can be very useful in the making of the Mandrakelinux system:

• Packaging. A GNU/Linux system is mainly made of programs picked up

on the Internet. They have to be packaged in order to work together.

• Programming. There are many, many projects directly supported by Man-

drakesoft: ﬁnd the one which most appeals to you and offer your help to the main developer(s).

Preface

• Internationalization. You can help us in the translation of web pages,

programs and their respective documentation.

• Documentation. Last but not least, the manual you are currently reading

requires a lot of work to stay up-to-date with regard to the rapid evolution of the system.

Consult the development projects (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/labs/) page to learn more about how you can contribute to the evolution of Mandrake- linux.

2. About this Quick-Startup Guide

Welcome, and thank you for choosing Mandrakelinux! This Quick-Startup Guide will help you understand the installation basics of a GNU/Linux distri-

bution, give you pointers as to what you need to do before actually installing the Mandrakelinux operating system (OS), as well as initiate you to the GNU/Linux environment.

We will ﬁrst tell you about technical procedures you should follow (“Insta-

llation Warning”, page 5). This is not mandatory, but let us just say we highly recommend that you follow these instructions! We will talk about data back-

up, scandisk, defrag, and the like.

We cover topics such as BIOS conﬁguration, boot disks and supported hardware in “Before Installation”, page 7.

Then comes the chapter you have been waiting for: “Installation with DrakX”, page 13. This utility is designed to guide you during the installation process.

After that we discuss the Linux paradigm by comparing it to Windows®and Mac OS®in “Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X ”, page 37. The next chapter (“Linux for Beginners”, page 43) was written especially to help out new users. In it we describe the ﬁrst steps a new user must master and we explain concepts such as “logging in/out”, the boot-loader menu, and more.

We then guide you through a fairly exhaustive list of documentation sources which you can consult in order to attain a better Linux knowledge (“Where to Get Documentation”, page 53). A Mandrakelinux-speciﬁc section points to numerous in-house resources which you can ﬁnd on the Net.

Preface

In the last chapter (Browsing the Web, page 69) we explain how to browse the Internet with the Konqueror application.

The last part (Use) gives you a short description of the following daily applications:

• the KDE graphical environment in “Using KDE”, page 57;

• the Konqueror ﬁle manager and web browser (see Managing your Files, page

65, and Browsing the Web, page 69);

• the KMail mail client (“Writing E-mails with KMail”, page 77);

• as well as two of OpenOﬃce.org’s components (see Word Processor, page 85,

and Spreadsheet, page 89).

Enjoy your reading!

Chapter 1. Installation Warning

This installation guide only covers the most common steps of the installation process. If you plan on using Windows®as well as GNU/Linux by dualboot (meaning being able to access either OS on the same computer), please note that it is easier to install Windows®before GNU/Linux. If Windows®is already set up on your system, and you’ve never installed GNU/Linux before, DrakX –– Mandrakelinux’s installation program –– will have to resize your

Windows®partition. This operation can be harmful to your data. Therefore,

you must perform the following steps before proceeding:

• you must run scandisk on your Windows

computer. The resizing program can detect some obvious errors, but scandisk is better suited for this task;

Before using scandisk (or defrag) make sure your screen saver and any other program that might write to the hard disk is turned oﬀ. To obtain even better results, you should run scandisk or defrag from Windows®’s “Safe Mode”.

• For maximum data security, you should also run defrag on your partition.

This further reduces the risk of data loss. This isn’t mandatory, but it’s highly recommended. Doing so will make the resizing process much faster and easier.

• The ultimate insurance against problems is to always back up your data!

Of course, you should back up your data on another computer, upload your back-ups on the web, on a friend’s computer, etc. Do not back it up onto the computer on which you want to install GNU/Linux.

If neither scandisk nor defrag are installed within Windows®, please refer to the Windows®documentation for instructions on installing them.

Chapter 1. Installation Warning

NTFS Partitions. Windows®2000, NT and XP users should remain careful: even though DiskDrake (through the ntfsresize application) is able to resize NTFS partitions, it’s highly recommended that you back up your data before starting the installation. Please see the Linux-NTFS site (http:// linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html##2.6) as well as the NTFS Resize FAQ (http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ ezaz/ntfsresize.html) for more information on the subject.

Windows®users can also use Partition MagicTM(http://www. symantec.com/partitionmagic/) to resize their NTFS partitions under Windows®.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

This chapter covers issues which should be addressed before you start your new Mandrakelinux installation. Make sure you read it completely since it will save you a lot of time. Also back up your data (on a different disk to the one you will install the system into) and plug in and turn on all your external devices (keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, etc.).

2.1. Conﬁguring your BIOS

The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is used to ﬁnd the device on which the operating system is located and starts it up. It’s also used for the initial hardware conﬁguration and hardware low-level access.

The appearance of plug’n’play devices and their widespread use means that all modern BIOSes can initialize these devices. In order for Linux to recognize plug’n’play devices, your BIOS must be conﬁgured to initialize them.

Changing your BIOS’ settings is usually performed by holding down the Del key (some BIOSes use the F1, F2, F10 or Esc keys instead) right after the computer is switched on. Unfortunately, there are many types of BIOSes. Therefore you will have to look for the appropriate option yourself. It’s often called PNP OS installed (or Plug’n’Play OS installed). Set this option to No and the BIOS will then initialize any plug’n’play devices, which helps Linux to recognize them.

All recent systems can boot from a CD-ROM. Look for Boot sequence or First boot device in the BIOS’ features setup, and set the CD-ROM as the ﬁrst one. If your system can’t boot from a CD-ROM you will need to use a ﬂoppy boot disk.

If you want to use a parallel printer connected locally to your machine, make sure the parallel port mode is set to ECP+EPP (or at least to one of ECP or EPP) and not to SPP, unless you have a really old printer. If the parallel port is not set this way you might still be able to print, but your printer will not be detected automatically and you will have to conﬁgure it by hand. Also make sure the printer is properly connected to your machine and powered on beforehand.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

2.2. Creating a Floppy Boot Disk

If your system cannot boot from the CD-ROM you will need to create a ﬂoppy boot disk. The CD-ROM contains all of the image ﬁles and utility programs needed to do so.

The ﬂoppy boot disk images are in the CD-ROM’s install/images/ directory.

The following is a list of different images and their respective installation methods:

cdrom.img

To install from a local IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive.

network.img and network_drivers.img

To install from an NFS, FTP, HTTP repository on your local LAN or via a PPPoE (DSL line) network connection. The network conﬁguration of the machine on which you wish to install may be manual or automatic. Please make sure that you make both ﬂoppies.

pcmcia.img

Use this image if the installation medium is reached through a PCMCIA card (network, CD-ROM, etc.).

Some PCMCIA devices now use common network drivers. If the PCMCIA device does not work, try again with network.img and network_drivers.img.

hd_grub.img

Use this image if you want to perform the installation from a hard disk. You need to copy the contents of the CD onto the hard drive (either on a FAT, ext2FS, ext3FS or ReiserFS partition). At the hd_grub customization site (http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/hd_grub.cgi) there is a little tool which may prove helpful for customizing your boot ﬂoppy.

The images/alternatives/* directory provides more or less the same boot images, but with a different (older) kernel. Actually it provides a 2.4 kernel (Mandrakelinux 10.1 onwards uses kernel 2.6) which might help you to get started on older systems.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

2.2.1. Creating a Boot Disk With Windows

In order to do so, you need to use the rawwrite program. You will ﬁnd it in the CD-ROM’s dosutils/ directory.

You may have noticed that there is a DOS version of the same program called rawrite. In fact, this is the original version of the program. rawwrite is a graphical front-end to it.

Start the program, as shown in ﬁgure 2-1.

Figure 2-1. The Rawwrite Program

Select the boot image to be copied and the target device. In almost every case, the target device is the A: drive (that is, the ﬁrst ﬂoppy disk drive).

Then if you have not already done so, insert an empty disk into your chosen ﬂoppy drive and click on the Write button. When completed click on the Exit button: now you have a ﬂoppy boot disk to install your Mandrakelinux distribution.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

2.2.2. Creating a Floppy Bo ot Disk From GNU/Linux

If you already have GNU/Linux installed (another version, or on another machine, etc.), then carry out the following steps:

1. Mount the CD-ROM, if needed. Let us suppose that the mount point is /mnt/cdrom.

2. Log in as root (to do so, open a terminal window, run the su command and enter root’s password).

3. Insert an empty diskette into the ﬂoppy drive and type:

$ dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/cdrom.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=512

When this operation is completed, your ﬂoppy boot disk will be ready for use.

Replace /dev/fd0 with /dev/fd1 if you are using the second ﬂoppy drive and, of course, the name of the image with the one you want.

2.3. Supported Hardware

Mandrakelinux can handle a large number of hardware devices, and the list is far too long to be quoted in its entirety. Nevertheless some of the steps we describe will help you to ﬁnd out if your hardware is compatible. It will also guide you in conﬁguring some problematic devices.

You may also consult an up-to-date list of supported hardware on the Mandrakelinux Hardware Database (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ hardware.php3) web site.

USB devices: support for USB 1.x and USB 2.0 is now extensive. Most peripherals are fully supported. You can obtain the list of supported hardware on the Linux-USB device overview (http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/) site.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

Legal Disclaimer: The Mandrakelinux Hardware Database contains information about hardware devices which have been tested and/or have been reported to function properly with Mandrakelinux. Due to the wide variety of system conﬁgurations, Mandrakesoft cannot guarantee that a speciﬁc device will work properly on your system.

2.3.1. Notes About Winmodems

winmodems are also called controller-less modems or software modems. Support for these peripherals is improving. Drivers do exist, but most of them are in binary form and available only for newer kernel versions.

If you have a PCI modem, look at the output of cat /proc/pci run as the root user. This will tell you the I/O port and the IRQ of the device. Then use the setserial command (for our example, the I/O address is 0xb400, the IRQ is 10 and the modem will be the 4thserial device) as follows:

setserial /dev/ttyS3 port 0xb400 irq 10 UART 16550A

Then try to query your modem using minicom or kppp. If it does not work, you may have a software modem. If it does work, create the /etc/rc.d/rc. setserial ﬁle and place the appropriate setserial command line in it.

If you happen to have a software modem in your machine, and you have a Mandrakeclub account, you might ﬁnd an RPM package that supports your modem. You can also take a look at the linmodems (http://linmodems. org/) web site.

Chapter 2. Before Installation

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.1. The Mandrakelinux Installer

With the Mandrakelinux DrakX installation program, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a newbie or a GNU/Linux guru. DrakX’s job is to provide you with a smooth installation and an easy transition to Mandrakelinux’s latest version.

DrakX will work best if all of your hardware is connected to your computer and powered on during the installation. Printers, modems, scanners and joysticks are just a few examples of peripherals which DrakX can automatically detect and conﬁgure as Mandrakelinux is being installed.

Figure 3-1. Very First Installation Welcome Screen

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

The ﬁrst screen you see displays information and installation options (ﬁgure 3-1). Allowing the installation to continue will simply begin the installation in normal or “linux” mode. Next we’ll go over some options and parameters which you can pass to the installation program if you run into problems.

Pressing F1 will open a help screen (ﬁgure 3-2). Here are some useful options to choose from:

Figure 3-2. Available Installation Options

• vgalo: if you have tried a default installation and didn’t see the graphical

interface (ﬁgure 3-3) you can try to run the installation in low resolution mode. This happens with certain types of video cards. With Mandrakelinux we give you a number of options to work around problems related to older hardware. To try the installation in low resolution mode, type vgalo at the prompt.

• text: if your video card is very old and the graphical installation doesn’t

work at all, you can always choose to install in text mode. Since all video cards can display text, this is the “last resort” kind of installation. However don’t worry: it’s unlikely that you’ll need this option.

• noauto: in some rare cases, your PC may appear to freeze or lock up during

the hardware detection phase. If that happens, adding the word noauto as a parameter will tell the installation program to bypass hardware detection. With that option DrakX won’t scan for hardware. Therefore you

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

will need to manually specify hardware parameters later in the installation process. The noauto parameter can be added to the previous modes, so depending on your hardware you may have to specify:

boot: vgalo noauto

to perform a low resolution graphical installation without DrakX performing a hardware scan.

• kernel options: most machines don’t require speciﬁc kernel options. Due

to bugs in the design or in the BIOS, there have been a few cases of motherboards incorrectly reporting the amount of memory installed. If you need to manually specify the amount of DRAM (which stands for Dynamic Random Access Memory) installed in your PC, use the mem= xxxM parameter. For example, to start the installation in normal mode with a computer containing 256 MB of memory, your command line would look like this:

boot: linux mem=256M

Now let’s move on to the actual installation process. When the installer starts, you will see a nice graphical interface (ﬁgure 3-3). On the left will be the various installation steps. The installation will occur in two phases: installation, then conﬁguration. The list on the left displays all the steps. The current step is marked by a highlighted bullet.

Each step may present various screens. Surﬁng between those screens is made possible through the Next and Previous buttons. Additionally an Advanced button may be available to show more advanced conﬁguration options. Note that most of the latter should only be handled by expert users. But there’s no harm in looking at them!

The Help button will show explanations concerning the current installation step.

3.2. Choosing your Language

The ﬁrst step is to choose your preferred language.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

Figure 3-3. Choosing the Default Language

Your choice of preferred language will affect the installer, the documentation, and the system in general. First select the region you’re located in, then the language you speak.

Clicking on the Advanced button will allow you to select other languages to be installed on your workstation, thereby installing the language-speciﬁc ﬁles for system documentation and applications. For example, if Spanish users are to use your machine, select English as the default language in the tree view and Espa˜nol in the Advanced section.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

About UTF-8 (unicode) support: Unicode is a character encoding intended to cover all existing languages. However full support for it in GNU/Linux is still under development. For that reason, Mandrakelinux’s use of UTF-8 will depend on the user’s choices:

1. If you choose a language with a strong legacy encoding (latin1 languages, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Tha¨ı, Greek, Turkish, and most iso-8859-2 languages), the legacy encoding will be used by default.

2. Other languages will use Unicode by default.

3. If two or more languages are to be installed, and those languages are not using the same encoding, then Unicode will be used for the whole system.

4. Finally, Unico de can also be forced for use throughout the system at a user’s request by selecting the Use Unicode by default option independently of which languages have been chosen.

Note that you’re not limited to choosing a single additional language. You may choose several, or even install them all by selecting the All languages box. Selecting support for a language means translations, fonts, spell checkers, etc. will also be installed for that language. Make sure you select all languages that are likely to be useful on the machine now, it may be difﬁcult to conﬁgure support for languages not chosen at install time at a later time.

To switch between the various languages installed on your system, you can launch the localedrake command as root to change the language used by the entire system. Running the command as a regular user will only change the language settings for that particular user.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.3. License Terms of the Distribution

Before continuing, you should carefully read the terms of the license. It covers the entire Mandrakelinux distribution. If you agree with all the terms it contains, select Accept and click on Next. If not, clicking on Quit will reboot your computer.

If you are curious about any technical changes which have occurred in the distribution since the last release, you can click on the Release Notes button to display them.

3.4. Installation Class

This step is activated only if an existing GNU/Linux partition has been found on your machine.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

DrakX now needs to know if you want to perform a new installation or to upgrade your existing Mandrakelinux system:

• Install. For the most part, this completely wipes out the old system. Ho-

wever, depending on your partitioning scheme, you can prevent some of your existing data (particularly /home directories) from being overwritten. If you wish to change how your hard drives are partitioned, or to change the ﬁle system, you should use this option.

• Upgrade.This installation class allows you to update the packages currently

installed on your Mandrakelinux system. Your current partitioning scheme and user data won’t be altered. Most of the other conﬁguration steps remain available and are similar to a standard installation.

Using the“Upgrade”option should work ﬁne on Mandrakelinux systems running version 9.2 or later. Performing an upgrade on versions prior to Mandrakelinux version 9.2 is not recommended.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.5. Conﬁguring the Keyboard

This step only shows if your language settings do not match one single keyboard. Otherwise, your keyboard map is automatically selected.

Depending on the language you chose (Choosing your Language, page 15), DrakX will automatically select a particular type of keyboard conﬁguration. Check that the selection suits you or choose another keyboard layout.

Also, you may not have a keyboard which corresponds exactly to your language: for example, if you are an English-speaking Swiss native, you may have a Swiss keyboard. Or if you speak English and are located in Québec, you may ﬁnd yourself in the same situation where your native language and country-set keyboard don’t match. In either case, this installation step will allow you to select an appropriate keyboard from a list.

Click on the More button to be shown a list of supported keyboards.

If you choose a keyboard layout based on a non-Latin alphabet, the next dialog will allow you to choose the key binding which will switch the keyboard between the Latin and non-Latin layouts.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.6. Partitioning Your Disk

You now need to decide where you want to install Mandrakelinux on your hard drive. If your hard drive is empty or if an existing operating system is using all the available space you will have to re-partition the drive. Basically, partitioning a hard drive means to logically divide it up in order to create the space required for your new Mandrakelinux system.

Because the process of partitioning a hard drive is usually irreversible and can lead to data loss, partitioning can be intimidating and stressful for the inexperienced user. Fortunately, DrakX includes a wizard which simpliﬁes this process. Before continuing with this step, read through the rest of this section and above all, take your time.

Depending on the conﬁguration of your hard drive, several options are available:

• Use free space. This option will perform an automatic partitioning of your

blank drive(s). If you use this option there will be no further prompts.

• Use existing partition. The wizard has detected one or more existing Linux

partitions on your hard drive. If you want to use them, choose this option. You will then be asked to choose the mount points associated with each of

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

the partitions. The legacy mount points are selected by default, and for the most part it’s a good idea to keep them. You will also be asked to choose the partitions to be formatted or preserved.

• Use the free space on the Windows partition. If Microsoft Windows

is insta-

lled on your hard drive, you might have to create free space for GNU/Linux. To do so, you can delete your Microsoft Windows®partition and data (see the “Erase entire disk” solution below) or resize your Microsoft Windows FAT or NTFS partition. Resizing can be performed without the loss of any data, provided you’ve previously defragmented the Windows®partition. Backing up your data is strongly recommended. Using this option is recommended if you want to use both Mandrakelinux and Microsoft Win-

dows®on the same computer.

Before choosing this option, please understand that after this procedure, the size of your Microsoft Windows®partition will be smaller then when you started. You’ll have less free space under Microsoft Windows®to store your data or to install new software.

• Erase entire disk. If you want to delete all data and all partitions present

on your hard drive and replace them with Mandrakelinux, choose this option. Be careful because you won’t be able to undo this operation after you conﬁrm.

If you choose this option, all data on your disk will be deleted.

• Remove Windows(TM). This option appears when the hard drive is enti-

rely taken by Microsoft Windows®. Choosing this option will simply erase everything on the drive and begin fresh, partitioning everything from scratch.

If you choose this option, all data on your disk will be lost.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

• Custom disk partitioning. Choose this option if you want to manually par-

tition your hard drive. Be careful: it is a powerful but dangerous choice and you can very easily lose all your data. That’s why this option is only recommended if you have performed custom disk partitioning before, and have enough GNU/Linux experience. For more instructions on how to use the DiskDrake utility, refer to the Managing Your Partitions section in the Starter Guidethe Managing Your Partitions section in the Starter Guide.

3.7. Multiple CD-ROM Installation

The Mandrakelinux installation is distributed on several CD-ROMs. If a selected package is located on another CD, DrakX will eject the current CD and ask you to insert the required one. If you do not have the requested CDROM at hand, just click on Cancel, and the corresponding packages will not be installed.

3.8. Root Password

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

This is the most crucial decision point for the security of your GNU/Linux system: you must enter the root password. Root is the system administrator and is the only user authorized to make updates, add users, change the overall system conﬁguration, and so on. In short, root can do everything! That’s why you must choose a password which is difﬁcult to guess: DrakX will tell you if the password you chose is too simple. You’re not forced to enter a password, but we strongly encourage you to do so. GNU/Linux is just as prone to operator error as any other operating system. Since root can overcome all limitations and unintentionally erase all data on partitions by carelessly accessing the partitions themselves, it is important that it be difﬁcult to become root.

The password should be a mixture of alphanumeric characters and at least 8 characters long. Never write down root’s password — it makes it far too easy to compromise your system.

One caveat: don’t make the password too long or too complicated because you must be able to remember it!

The password won’t be displayed on screen as you type it. To reduce the chance of a blind typing error you will need to enter the password twice. If you do happen to make the same typing error twice, you will have to use this “incorrect” password when you try to connect as root, at least for the ﬁrst time.

If you want an authentication server to control access to your computer, click on the Advanced button.

If your network uses either LDAP, NIS, PDC Windows Domain, or Active Directory authentication services, select the appropriate one for authentication. If you don’t know which one to use, you should ask your network administrator.

If you happen to have problems with remembering passwords, or if your computer will never be connected to the Internet and you absolutely trust everybody who uses your computer, you can choose to have No password.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.9. Adding a User

GNU/Linux is a multi-user system which means each user can have his or her own preferences, own ﬁles and so on. But unlike root, who is the system administrator, the users you add at this point won’t be authorized to change anything except their own ﬁles and their own conﬁgurations, so protecting the system from unintentional or malicious changes which could have a serious impact on it.

You will have to create at least one regular user for yourself — this is the account which you should use for routine, day-to-day usage. Although it’s very easy to log in as root to do anything and everything, it may also be very dangerous! A very simple mistake could mean that your system won’t work any more. If you make a serious mistake as a regular user, the worst that can happen is that you’ll lose some information, but you won’t affect the entire system.

The ﬁrst ﬁeld asks you for a real name. Of course, this is not mandatory — any name will do. DrakX will use the ﬁrst word you type in this ﬁeld and copy it, all in lowercase, to the Login name ﬁeld, which is the name this user will enter to log onto the system. If you like, you may override the default and change the user name. The next step is to enter a password. From a

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

security point of view, a non-privileged (regular) user’s password is not as crucial as the root password, but that’s no reason to neglect it by making it blank or too simple: after all, your ﬁles could be the ones at risk.

Once you click on Accept user, you can add other users. Add a user for each one of your friends, your father, your sister, etc. Click Next when you’re ﬁnished adding users.

Clicking the Advanced button allows you to change the default shell for that user (bash by default).

When you’re ﬁnished adding users, you’ll be proposed to choose a user who will be automatically logged into the system when the computer boots up. If you’re interested in that feature (and don’t care much about local security), choose the desired user (if more than one regular user is deﬁned) and select a window manager, then click on Next. If you’re not interested in this feature, uncheck the Do you want to use this feature? box.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.10. Installing a Bootloader

A bootloader is a small program which is started by the computer at boot time. It’s responsible for starting up the whole system. Normally, the bootloader installation is totally automated. DrakX will analyze the disk boot sector and act according to what it ﬁnds there:

• if a Windows

boot sector is found, it will replace it with a GRUB/LILO boot

sector. This way you will be able to load either GNU/Linux or any other OS installed on your machine.

• if a GRUB or LILO boot sector is found, it will replace it with a new one.

If DrakX can’t determine where to place the boot sector, it will ask you where it should place it. Generally, the First sector of drive (MBR) is the safest place. Choosing Skip won’t install a bootloader. Use this option only if you know what you’re doing.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.11. Checking Miscellaneous Parameters

3.11.1. Summary

As a review, DrakX will present a summary of information it has gathered about your system. Depending on the hardware installed on your machine, you may have some or all of the following entries. Each entry is made up of the hardware item to be conﬁgured, followed by a quick summary of the current conﬁguration. Click on the corresponding Conﬁgure button to make any changes.

• Keyboard: check the current keyboard map conﬁguration and change it if

necessary.

• Country / Region: check the current country selection. If you’re not in

the country selected by DrakX, click on the Conﬁgure button and choose another. If your country isn’t in the list shown, click on the More button to get a complete country list.

• Timezone: by default, DrakX deduces your time zone based on the country

you have chosen. You can click on the Conﬁgure button here if this is not

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

correct.

• Mouse: verify the current mouse conﬁguration and click on the button to

change it if necessary.

• Printer: clicking on the Conﬁgure button will open the printer conﬁguration

wizard. Consult the corresponding chapter of the Starter Guide for more information on how to set up a new printer. The interface presented in our manual is similar to the one used during installation.

• Sound card: if a sound card is detected on your system, it will be displayed

here. If you notice the sound card isn’t the one actually present on your system, you can click on the button and choose a different driver.

• TV card: if you have a TV card, this is where information about its conﬁgu-

ration will be displayed. If you have a TV card and it isn’t detected, click on Conﬁgure to try to conﬁgure it manually.

• Graphical Interface: by default, DrakX conﬁgures your graphical interface in

800x600 or 1024x768 resolution. If that doesn’t suit you, click on Conﬁgure to reconﬁgure your graphical interface. You can click on Help from within the conﬁguration wizard to beneﬁt from full in-line help.

• Network: if you wish to conﬁgure your Internet or local network access,

you can do so from here. Refer to the printed documentation or use the Mandrakelinux Control Center after the installation has ﬁnished to beneﬁt from full in-line help.

• Proxies: allows to conﬁgure HTTP and FTP proxy addresses if the machine

you’re installing on is to be located behind a proxy server.

• Security Level: this entry allows you to redeﬁne the security level.

• Firewall: if you plan to connect your machine to the Internet, it’s a good

idea to protect yourself from intrusions by setting up a ﬁrewall. Consult the corresponding section of the Starter Guide for details about ﬁrewall settings.

• Bootloader: if you wish to change your bootloader conﬁguration, click this

button. This should be reserved to advanced users. Refer to the printed documentation or the in-line help about bootloader conﬁguration in the Mandrakelinux Control Center.

• Services: through this entry you can ﬁne tune which services will be run on

your machine. If you plan to use this machine as a server it’s a good idea to review this setup.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.11.2. Time Zone Options

This dialog appears after selecting a new time zone in the time zones list. After you’ve chosen the location nearest to your time zone, two more options are shown.

GNU/Linux manages time in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and translates it to local time according to the time zone you selected. If the clock on your motherboard is set to local time, you may deactivate this by deselecting Hard- ware clock set to GMT, which will let GNU/Linux know that the system clock and the hardware clock are in the same time zone. This is useful when the machine also hosts another operating system.

The Automatic time synchronization option will automatically regulate the system clock by connecting to a remote time server on the Internet. For this feature to work, you must have a working Internet connection. We recommend that you choose a time server located near you or the generic World Wide entry which will select the best server for you. This option actually installs a time server which can be used by other machines on your local network as well.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.11.3. Conﬁguring X, the Graphical Server

X (for X Window System) is the heart of the GNU/Linux graphical interface on which all the graphical environments (KDE, GNOME, AfterStep, Window- Maker, etc.) bundled with Mandrakelinux rely on.

You will see a list of different parameters which you can change in order to optimize your graphical display.

Graphic Card

If everything works ﬁne, the installer should detect and conﬁgure the graphic card installed on your machine. If the detection or conﬁguration is incorrect, you can choose the card installed on your system from a list.

In the situation where different servers are available for your card, with or without 3D acceleration, you’re asked to choose the server which best suits your needs.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

Monitor

If the installer fails to detect or conﬁgure your monitor properly, you can choose from this list the monitor which is connected to your computer.

Resolution

Here you can choose the resolutions and color depths available for your graphics hardware. Choose the one which best suits your needs (you will be able to make changes after the installation). A sample of the chosen conﬁguration will be shown in the monitor picture.

Test

Depending on your hardware, this entry might not appear.

The system will try to open a graphical screen at the desired resolution. If you see the test message during the test and answer Yes, then DrakX will proceed to the next step. If you don’t see it, it means that some part of the auto-detected conﬁguration was incorrect and the test will automatically end after 12 seconds and return you to the menu. Change settings until you get a correct graphical display.

Options

This step allows you to choose whether you want your machine to automatically switch to a graphical interface at boot. Obviously, you may want to check No if your machine is to act as a server, or if you were not successful in getting the display conﬁgured.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.11.4. Selecting Available Services at Boot Time

This dialog is used to select which services you wish to start at boot time.

DrakX will list all services available on the current installation. Review each one of them carefully and uncheck those which aren’t needed at boot time.

A short explanatory text will be displayed about a service when it is selected. However, if you’re not sure whether a service is useful or not, it is safer to leave the default behavior.

At this stage, be very careful if you intend to use your machine as a server: you probably don’t want to start any services which you don’t need. Please remember that some services can be dangerous if they’re enabled on a server. In general, select only those services you really need.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.12. Installing Updates from the Internet

By the time you install Mandrakelinux, it’s likely that some packages will have been updated since the initial release. Bugs may have been ﬁxed, security issues resolved, etc... To allow you to beneﬁt from these updates, you’re now able to download them from the Internet. Select Yes if you have a working Internet connection and you want to install any updated packages now, or No if you prefer to install updated packages later.

Choosing Yes will display a list of web locations from which updates can be retrieved. You should choose one near to you. A package-selection tree will appear: review the selection, and press Install to retrieve and install the selected package(s), or Cancel to abort.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.13. It’s Over!

There you are. The installation is now complete and your GNU/Linux system is ready to be used. Just click on Reboot to restart the system. Don’t forget to remove the installation media (CD-ROM or ﬂoppy). The ﬁrst thing you should see after your computer has ﬁnished doing its hardware tests is the boot-loader menu, which gives you the choice between the OSes your system can boot.

3.13.1. Advanced Options

The Advanced button shows two more buttons to:

1. Generate auto-install ﬂoppy: enables you to create an installation ﬂoppy

disk which will automatically perform a whole installation, similar to the one just ﬁnished, without the help of an operator.

Note that two different options are available after clicking on that button:

• Replay. This is a partially automated installation. The partitioning step

is the only interactive procedure.

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

• Automated. Fully automated installation: the hard disk is completely

rewritten, all data is lost.

This feature is very handy when installing on a number of similar machines. See the Auto install (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/ drakx/auto_inst.html) section on our web site for more information.

2. Save packages selection1: saves a list of the packages selected in this ins-

tallation. To use this selection with another installation, insert the ﬂoppy and start the installation. At the prompt, press the F1 key, type linux defcfg="floppy" and press the Enter key.

3.14. How to Uninstall Linux

If for any reason you want to uninstall Mandrakelinux, you can do so. The process of uninstalling Mandrakelinux is done in two steps:

Removing partitions on your hard drive will inevitably result in the loss of all data stored on those partitions. Please make sure you’ve backed up all of the data you want to keep before proceeding.

1. Delete all partitions related to Mandrakelinux on your hard drive (usually partitions hosting ext3 ﬁle systems and the Swap partition) and — optionally — replace them with a single partition using DiskDrake.

2. Remove the bootloader, LILO in this example, from the Master Boot Record (MBR). To do so, execute lilo -U in a console, as root. Doing this will not only uninstall LILO but will also restore the previous master boot record, if any.

If you have a different boot loader, please refer to its documentation to determine how to regenerate the master boot record.

1. You need a FAT-formatted ﬂoppy. To create one under GNU/Linux, type mformat a: or, as root, fdformat /dev/fd0 followed by mkfs.vfat /dev/fd0.

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows

and Mac OS®X

This chapter is aimed at users migrating from Windows®or Mac OS®X. Instead of presenting the various applications in depth, it tries to answer the most common questions and/or issues former Windows®or Mac OS®X users might ask.

4.1. Where’s my...?

Experienced Windows®and Mac OS®X users are normally accustomed to certain functions and/or concepts which are often treated differently in GNU/Linux.

4.1.1. Start Menu

In Windows®, most applications and system tools are accessed through the so-called Start Menu; this concept remains more or less the same, except it’s now called the Main Menu: in KDE you open it by clicking on the yellow star at the bottom left of your screen.

For users coming from Mac OS®X, Mandrakelinux’s Main Menu can be considered as a replacement for functions from both the Apple Menu, located at the far left of the menu bar, and the Applications folder available in the Finder.

4.1.2. Applications

The wide variety of applications is a large differentiator between GNU/Linux and Windows®. Mandrakelinux installs many more applications onto your system, and clicking on the main menu will give you a wide range of choices depending on what you would like to do. There are many fully-ﬂedged applications available to accomplish many common tasks such as ofﬁce work (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), e-mail handling, web browsing, etc.

Mac OS®X users may ﬁnd similarities between Mac OS®X and GNU/Linux applications, because Mac OS®X is based on BSD®, a UNIX®-like system on which GNU/Linux is also based. Moreover, other applications designed for the desktop have been ported to, or are available under, the X11 implementation available for Mac OS®X.

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X

You may also install a large number of applications through the RpmDrake utility

4.1.3. Control Panel/System Preferences

The Control Panel in Windows®and the System Preferences utility in Mac OS X are replaced by the Mandrakelinux Control Center under Mandrakelinux. It

can be accessed by choosing Administer your system→Conﬁgure your computer in the main menu. Through this interface, you have the ability to modify most of your system’s settings with graphical tools.

4.1.4. DOS Shell

GNU/Linux is still very fond of shell environments. Unlike Windows®the po- pularity of the shell is not fading away as is evident by the availability of the shell in Mac OS®X. By default, Mandrakelinux installs bash, a truly powerful shell environment. You can access it by opening the main menu and choosing Administer your system→Use a terminal emulator.

Almost none of your DOS commands or functions will work in a Linux shell. Take a look at the Introduction to the Command Line chapter in the Reference Manual to discover their equivalents and much, much more. Have fun, you now have a real shell to hand!

4.1.5. Network Neighborhood

GNU/Linux uses TCP/IP by default, not SMB (the Windows®network pro- tocol), so there’s nothing like a network neighborhood icon to give you a view of the network you’re in. However, you may use the LinNeighborhood application to give you similar functionality.

Konqueror can also accomplish the same tasks. Just type smb:/ in the location bar, and all of the shared Windows®resources on the network will appear. Please remember that for this to work, the samba-client package must be installed.

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X

4.1.6. C: Drive

The “lettered drive” is a concept exclusive to Windows®. On UNIX®systems, the drive notion (C:, D:, ..., Z:) is replaced by “mount points”. From a user perspective, you’re always accessing directories. Your system will use conﬁguration ﬁles to instruct the ﬁle system how to “load” all relevant disks, disk partitions and remote systems, and then assign them to a speciﬁed directory, generally under the /mnt directory. While this concept is similar to that found in Mac OS®X, it is slightly different. What is mounted under /mnt with GNU/Linux is mounted under /Volumes in Mac OS®X but is made available as a “root ﬁle system” in the Finder.

4.1.7. CD-ROM Drives

The same concept as for C: applies here. CD-ROMs are mounted in /mnt/ cdrom. To access the CD-ROM, just click on the desktop icon and the CD-

ROM’s contents will appear in a new window.

Things are a bit diﬀerent for audio and data CDs: upon inserting an audio CD in the drive, the CD player is automatically loaded and starts playing. Please see the Audio, Movie and Video Applications chapter of the Starter Guide.

4.1.8. Floppy Disk Drives

Like CD-ROMs and disk partitions, ﬂoppy disks are mounted and will appear on /mnt/floppy. This feature directly supports reading Windows®diskettes.

Icons are displayed on your desktop to access all your removable media devices: ﬂoppy, CD-ROM, ZIP, USB keys, and others.

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X

4.1.9. My Documents

Under Mandrakelinux every user has a directory called Documents/ located in their home directory. For example, user Peter should store its documents in

/home/peter/Documents/

The home directory concept is equivalent to the C:\Winnt\Profiles\user_ name\ or C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\ directories in Windows

NT®, Windows®2000 and Windows®XP and is explained in “Using KDE”, page 57.

Under Mac OS®X this is very similar. The home directory’s equivalent is /Users/user_name and it also contains a directory called Documents.

4.1.10. The Applications Needed to Open Some Kinds of Document

GNU/Linux can open most standard ﬁle formats: PNG pictures, Rich Text Format texts, PostScript printouts, etc. These ﬁle formats should always be preferred as they facilitate exchange of data between applications, and they ensure your freedom to change to another application and do not lock you into a given operating system.

You may also have many ﬁles in proprietary formats such as Microsoft®Excel or Microsoft®Word documents. OpenOﬃce.org is just one application which can handle many popular formats for ofﬁce applications (see Word Processor, page 85 and Spreadsheet, page 89).

We are speciﬁcally mentioning oﬃce documents because they are important. Due to space constraints we cannot cover every single Windows®application and its GNU/Linux equivalent. However, there is a high probability that you will ﬁnd GNU/Linux equivalents for all the programs you used under Windows®or Mac OS®X. To get an idea of GNU/Linux equivalents of Windows®applications, you can consult this table of equivalents (http://linuxshop.ru/ linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml).

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X

4.2. A Brave New World!

Now that you have found your way around GNU/Linux, here is a brief presentation of the features which make excellent reasons to migrate to GNU/Linux.

4.2.1. A Multi-User Environment

GNU/Linux, like Mac OS®X, is based on UNIX®. This basically implies a shift in the structure of your environment, from a single workstation to a multi-user architecture and implies very thorough user management. Each ﬁle, service and application is exclusively allocated to a user or a group of users, according to its nature. For example, every user has his or her own personal directory, containing personal data and personal conﬁguration ﬁles, which can be made inaccessible (even invisible) to other users.

4.2.2. Multiple Tasking

GNU/Linux has always been a very strong operating system for multi-tasking (running many applications concurrently). Although other operating systems have made great progress, GNU/Linux remains a leader in this domain.

4.2.3. Multiple Desktops

With GNU/Linux, KDE and GNOME give you as many desktops as necessary to work with, instead of just a single desktop. Users who like to have numerous applications running at the same time will greatly appreciate this feature since it makes for a much cleaner working environment.

4.2.4. Full Desktop Customization

Regarding aesthetics, GNU/Linux truly rocks! Not only can you choose between KDE or GNOME and many other window managers, but you can also highly customize their appearance with themes. Themes go beyond just the initial look and feel: actually, everything you see can be modiﬁed, from the background image to the behavior of applications when they are closed, which is truly unique.

Chapter 4. Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X

See the themes page on Freshmeat (http://themes.freshmeat.net/) for available designs.

4.2.5. Thousands of Free Applications

By far, the GNU/Linux community is the most generous one. Given a speciﬁc problem, you will most likely ﬁnd a script or an application to answer your needs, for free! Also, Mandrakelinux includes hundreds of applications not documented in this book, so do not be shy, try them out. You’ll most probably be surprised by the extent of the possibilities GNU/Linux offers.

GNU/Linux also offers advanced server functionality, such as the ability to host mail or web page servers “out of the box”.

4.2.6. No More Reboots!

Windows®and Mac OS®(although this has largely been addressed in Mac OS®X) users know the level of frustration generated by crashing systems.

Even though GNU/Linux is not perfect, its stability is one of its strongest points. Sometimes, applications crash, but rarely do they take the operating system down with them.

We hope this rapid tour will help you truly appreciate GNU/Linux’s strengths. Do not be afraid to explore further!

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

5.1. Introduction

This chapter was written for inexperienced GNU/Linux users. If you know how to “log in and out”, use KDE and know where your applications reside on your Mandrakelinux system, skip ahead to the next chapter. If not, read on! After reading this chapter, all subsequent chapters will make much more sense to you.

If you are an experienced Windows®or Mac OS®user, refer to

“Migrating to Linux from Windows®and Mac OS®X ”, page 37,

which will ease the transition between those operating systems and GNU/Linux.

5.2. The Boot-Loader Menu

When you reboot your computer after completing your Mandrakelinux installation, you will ﬁrst see a menu containing three or more items called the bootloader menu. This allows you to boot your GNU/Linux system, or any other operating systems you may have already installed, as well as some special options.

The number of items and their names will vary depending on your particular conﬁguration. The one we are interested in at the moment is obviously the one labeled linux, which will start your Mandrakelinux system. It is the default item unless you manually conﬁgure it differently. All you need to do is to wait a few seconds — you will see a countdown at the bottom of the screen — or press Enter, and Mandrakelinux will start loading. You can select a different item by using the arrow keys on your keyboard and pressing the Enter key.

5.3. Getting Ready for your Session

GNU/Linux is a multiuser system. This means that more than one user can access the same machine, each with the ability to keep his or her own data and conﬁguration ﬁles private and protected from other users. To be able to

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

do this, different user accounts must be created by the administrator. The administrator is called root, whose password has been set during installation, and who has no restrictions at all on the system.

It’s also important to understand the terms “to log in” and “to log out”. To log in means to identify yourself to the computer. Think of it as a security ofﬁcer verifying who you are before letting you in. After logging in, the system takes a number of actions in order to give you access to the system’s resources. By logging in, you start a so-called “session”.

When you log out you are telling the system you no longer need to use its resources. Your personal session is closed, you exit the graphical interface and the login screen appears once more.

Although these deﬁnitions are valid within the scope of this chapter, they are oversimpliﬁed. As you read the following chapters, you will better understand these concepts, their advantages and options.

5.4. Beginning your Session

We assume that you are sitting in front of a running Mandrakelinux computer which, when turned on, automatically displays the graphical login screen. If this is not the case and you are facing a black screen with something like:

Mandrakelinux release 10.1 (Official) for i586 Kernel 2.6.8.1-10mdk on an i686 / tty1 machine_name login:

with a ﬂashing cursor, type your user name (as deﬁned during installation or by your system administrator), then your password. You should now be “logged in”. Now type startx and the graphical interface will be launched (KDE by default, see “Using KDE”, page 57).

5.4.1. The Mandrakeﬁrsttime Wizard

The ﬁrst time you access your Mandrakelinux system, you will encounter the Mandrakeﬁrsttime Wizard (ﬁgure 5-1). It will help you register your product and set up a Mandrakeclub account.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

If you are using the download edition of Mandrakelinux, you will ﬁrst be asked to ﬁll out a questionnaire which will help Mandrakesoft understand its user-base better.

Figure 5-1. The Mandrakeﬁrsttime Wizard

You will now be prompted to create a personal Mandrakeclub account, which will give you instant access to the many valuable on-line services offered by Mandrakesoft, such as special commercial software downloads (complete with automatic download and install procedures), dedicated multilingual forums, the option to vote for your favorite software packages to be included in the Mandrakelinux distribution, special discounts, and more. Your Mandra- kelinux package includes a trial Mandrakeclub account, so you can evaluate the many available services and then later extend your account if you like their features (and we are sure you will!).

Moreover, if you already have a Mandrakeclub account or are going to activate

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

one now, Mandrakeﬁrsttime Wizard will also help you conﬁgure your system to allow easy downloading and installation of special updates from the Man- drakeclub web site directly, using our user-friendly Software Manager. Please remember that e-mail addresses and user names are unique on Mandrakeclub, so you will not be able to open a trial account if you are already subscribed.

5.4.2. Identifying Yourself

You are currently in front of the following display (ﬁgure 5-2). To log into the system, you need to supply both your login name and password.

Figure 5-2. The Login Window

The login procedure takes place in four simple steps:

1. Click on the icon corresponding to your login name.

2. Type your secret password once that ﬁeld is displayed

1. The actual password will not be displayed but will be replaced by little stars (*). Remember: passwords under GNU/Linux are case sensitive, which means that if your password is Very_Secret and you type Very_secret, access will be denied!

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

3. Choose your favorite graphical environment from the Session type pulldown menu2. The session you last chose is selected by default, but if this is the ﬁrst time that you have logged in, the default environment is KDE.

4. Finally click on the Login button to begin your session. Be patient! It may take a few seconds before your desktop is ready to be used.

If you are the only user of your new Mandrakelinux system, and you are annoyed by having to type your login name and password every time you start a new session, there is a way to avoid this step: by booting directly into your favorite desktop environment. This feature is known as auto-login.

Be careful with this option as no password will be asked for, therefore anybody can access your system.

5.5. Using your Graphical Environment

5.5.1. The Mandrakelinux Desktop

All modern graphical environments share a common set of features: a main menu, a desktop area with some icons, a panel, etc. In the following paragraphs we will describe the elements which compose the desktop environment.

2. This step is optional and allows you to choose a speciﬁc graphical environment. While we encourage you to try the various available choices so you can ﬁnd the one you prefer, we strongly suggest you start with either KDE.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

Figure 5-3. The KDE Desktop

1. Icons are located on the left of the screen and in the bar at the bottom of the screen. These are enhanced by a short description beneath them (the icon’s title or name). Clicking on an icon either launches a program or opens a folder. In both cases a window will appear on the desktop.

2. The panel is located in the lower part of the screen. It provides quick access to useful tools such as a Terminal, a web browser, etc. Each icon symbolizes an application (or program). Just move your mouse cursor over one of the icons and leave it there for a few seconds. A yellow help balloon will appear to describe the icon’s function.

3. The icons and the panel do not ﬂoat on the screen: they are “stuck” on something called the desktop, also called the background. In a sense, the desktop is where everything you see or use lives. Move your mouse cursor to a free area on the desktop (i.e. where there is nothing) and rightclick: a menu will appear which will give you access to several more functions.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

5.5.2. Accessing Applications

To access all of the software you installed during the installation process, click on the main menu. The applications are organized by tasks,

so ﬁnding the program you are looking for is pretty easy.

5.5.3. Opening a Window on the Desktop

If you click on the icon on the desktop labeled as Home this window will appear:

Figure 5-4. KDE File Manager

You just launched a ﬁle manager called Konqueror. The window which pops up displays the content of your Home directory. This is where all of your personal documents and ﬁles are stored: only you can access them.

A window is composed of several parts. On top is the title bar. It shows the name or title of the application you launched and, possibly, the name of the document you are working on. It can be in two different states:

• Active. (full-colored title bar) This means you are currently using it.

• Inactive. (shaded title bar)The program is running, but you are not inte-

racting with it at the moment.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

Just under the title bar is the menu bar. In our example, it contains menus named Edit, View, and so on. Click on Edit. A list of items will appear in a drop-down menu, each one giving you access to one of the program’s functions.

Below the menu bar is the application’s tool bar. It consists of one or more rows of icons, each one equivalent to an item in one of the application’s dropdown menus: you can consider them as a shortcuts to frequently-accessed program features, which can be found elsewhere in the menu bar.

The status bar usually sits at the bottom of the window. In it you will ﬁnd information about the program’s activity. Not all programs offer this feature, but if the one you are using does, remember to check it from time to time.

5.5.4. Managing Desktops

We introduced the desktop to point out the area of the screen where all objects are placed. Now look at the panel at the bottom of the screen. You can see a group of desktop buttons:

Figure 5-5. KDE’s Virtual Desktop Buttons

These buttons give you access to virtual desktops, which are identical copies of the desktop you see after you have logged in. You will ﬁnd more information about the handling and usage of virtual desktops in “Using KDE”, page

57.

Click on the button labeled 2: as you can see, the window you opened before disappears. You didn’t close it, you simply switched desktops. Click on the button labeled 1. The previous desktop will be displayed.

This feature called virtual desktops is very handy. It allows you to open several windows and to organize them as you wish.

You can also change which virtual desktop a window is currently in. This may be handy to logically organize your work by desktop, for instance moving all network related windows into desktop 2, all multimedia applications into another desktop, and so on.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

So with KDE, right-click on the window’s title bar and a pull-down menu will appear containing an item named To Desktop. Just point to this item and a list of your virtual desktops will appear. Simply choose the virtual desktop that you want to move it to.

5.6. Logging Out of your Session

When you are ﬁnally done using your computer, don’t forget to tell the system you are leaving, that is remember to log out in a proper manner.

Logging out can be carried out in many ways: from the main menu, or from the menu that appears when you right-click on the desktop.

Whichever method you use, the screen will shade and a little box will pop up with options. If you click on OK you will quit the current session and, after all of your windows and the desktop itself have closed, you will be returned to the login screen.

However there are two other options available in the conﬁrmation window: you can choose to shutdown the system (power off the computer), as well as reboot your system. Again, just click on the OK button after you’ve selected the desired option.

This is the correct and safe way to shut down or reboot your system. You should never try to do it by pushing your computer’s power button because this can lead to serious problems such as ﬁle-system corruption or the loss of data.

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

Chapter 6. Where to Get Documentation

Apart from the manuals included with Mandrakelinux, documentation is avai- lable from many sources. The next few pages contain suggestions which you might ﬁnd useful.

6.1. Mandrakelinux-Speciﬁc Documentation

6.1.1. Mandrakesoft’s Own Documentation

Some of those manuals may be available in your Mandrakelinux pack, in the mandrake_doc-en package. Once this is installed, you will have a new menu entry: More Applications+Documentation→Mandrakelinux documentation in English.

This section lists all the documentation which Mandrakesoft produced for the current release:

• Starter Guide. This manual is intended to get you going with Mandrakeli-

nux. It includes basic topics which should be of interest to new GNU/Linux users, as well as conﬁguration procedures for the most important elements of Mandrakelinux.

• Reference Manual. Available on-line and in the Mandrakelinux –– Power-

Pack Edition, this document covers advanced GNU/Linux operations and system administration.

6.1.2. Internet Resources

Internet information sources are widespread and many web sites devoted to GNU/Linux and its use or conﬁguration exist. However, some sources of information are better than others.

Your preferred source of information should be the Mandrakelinux ofﬁcial web site (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/). In particular, check out the support section (http://mandrakeexpert.com).

On the other hand, many unofﬁcial sources can also be of value. For one there is the Mandrake Community Twiki (http://mandrake.vmlinuz.ca/ bin/view/Main/WebHome). It offers a lot of resources and gives information and documentation which can certainly interest Mandrakelinux users.

Chapter 6. Where to Get Documentation

6.1.2.1. Mandrakeclub

If you’re familiar with Mandrakelinux’s web sites, you probably know about Mandrakeclub (http://mandrakeclub.com/). It’s the meeting point for all Mandrakelinux users. On it you will ﬁnd questions along with their answers, suggestions and news related to Mandrakelinux and GNU/Linux. You will be able to express your opinions and inﬂuence future development of Mandra- kelinux. If you’re not yet a member, we encourage you to join.

One speciﬁc area of the Club is of particular interest: the Mandrakeclub Knowledge Base (http://kb.mandrakeclub.com/) is the Mandrakelinux user’s database. It is probably the largest collection of Mandrakelinux-related documentation on the web.

It collects submissions by Mandrakelinux users. It also features a discussion forum and a community newsletter. The articles are targeted towards beginners and semi-advanced users. They don’t simply repeat what may be read somewhere else. Their aim is to be practical.

Topics range from administrative issues, such as the handling of the shell, to the tweaking of X’s performance, GNU/Linux’s graphical subsystem.

6.1.2.2. Mandrakesecure

The Mandrakesoft Security Advisories (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/ security/) website (formerly known as Mandrakesecure) is Mandrakesoft’s

very own security site which covers package vulnerabilities.

6.2. GNU/Linux Useful Resources

In this section we present resources useful for any GNU/Linux distribution. Most are not written speciﬁcally for Mandrakelinux, but might prove useful likewise.

Chapter 6. Where to Get Documentation

6.2.1. The /usr/share/doc Directory

Most packages include their own documentation in one of /usr/share/doc’s sub-directories, which will be named after the speciﬁc package. Mandrakeli-

nux’s own documentation, when installed, is available in the /usr/share/ doc/mandrake/ directory.

6.2.2. The Man Pages

The Manual Pages (also known as “man pages”) are a set of documents which you can read in order to better understand GNU/Linux commands. The latter are usually issued through a “command line” and allow great control over your system (see the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manualsee the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manual). Although these man pages might seem discouraging at ﬁrst, they offer great detail and we encourage you to browse through them when a problem occurs.

This should be your primary source of information on a day-to-day basis. Almost all commands have a manual page. Other items, such as certain conﬁguration ﬁles, library functions for programmers and others system aspects also have their own man pages.

Man page contents are arranged in different sections. References to these are made in the following manner: for example, open(2), fstab(5) will respectively refer to the open page in section 2 and the fstab page in section 5.

To display a manual page in a terminal (or shell), type man. The syntax for obtaining a man page is:

man [options] [section] <manual page>

man also has documentation, which can be obtained by typing man man. Manual pages are formatted and then displayed using the less pager.

The names of the manual pages and their relevant sections appear at the top of each page. At the bottom of the page you will ﬁnd references to other pages with related subjects (usually in the SEE ALSO section).

You can start by consulting the pages related to the different commands covered in the Reference Manualthe Reference Manual: ls(1), chmod(1), etc.

Chapter 6. Where to Get Documentation

If you cannot ﬁnd the right manual page — for example, you want to use the mknod function in one of your programs but you end up on the mknod command page — make sure you spell out the section explicitly. In our example: man 2 mknod. If you forgot the exact section, man -a mknod will read through all the sections looking for pages named mknod.

You can also display man pages in Konqueror by using the man:/ preﬁx in your URL. For example, to display the man page for fstab(5), type in the Location ﬁeld: man:/fstab(5)

Chapter 7. Using KDE

7.1. Discovering the K Desktop Environment

This chapter will introduce the K Desktop Environment (KDE) and its panel. It will also talk about the concept of virtual desktops, how to navigate through and manage them and session support.

7.1.1. The Desktop

Figure 7-1. The KDE Desktop

KDE follows the modern desktop paradigm. In the above ﬁgure you see the desktop itself with some icons on it, while the panel sits at the bottom. However, it introduces something new if you come from the Windows®world: virtual desktops (see Virtual Desktops, page 59)

The icons on the desktop represent ﬁles, directories, applications, devices, web pages (actually, the page’s URL), etc. Almost “everything” can be placed

Chapter 7. Using KDE

on it. Different actions are associated to icons. For example: clicking on a text ﬁle opens it into a text editor, clicking on a web page opens the URL inside Konqueror (see Browsing Web Pages, page 67), and so on.

Here are some of your desktop’s default icons, along with a brief explanation for each of them.

Home. Gives access to all your personal ﬁles. Under UNIX®-like

operating systems (Mandrakelinux is one of them), every user has a personal directory usually named /home/user_name where user_name is the user ’s login name.

Trash. Gives access to all deleted ﬁles (the equivalent of Windows®’

Recycle Bin). Please bear in mind that ﬁles can be deleted without being thrown into the trash can (“direct” ﬁle deletion) so some deleted ﬁles might not be accessible through the trash can.

Dynamic Icons for Removable Media. There will be icons for removable devices on your system (CD-ROM drive, ﬂoppy disk drive, ZIP/JAZ drives, etc.). Clicking on a device icon opens the medium inside that device. An error message may also be shown if there is no medium present or if the medium can not be read for some reason.

7.1.2. The Panel

Figure 7-2. The KDE Panel

The panel is the bar which sits at the bottom of your desktop1which contains the following main components:

The Main Menu. Allows you to access the software installed on

your system. It is the equivalent of Windows®’s Start menu. Programs are

1. By default the panel is at the bottom, but it may be placed on any border of the desktop.

Chapter 7. Using KDE

arranged into convenient categories so you can quickly and easily ﬁnd the application you want to run.

Show Desktop. Use this to minimize all currently opened windows. Pressing it again will restore the windows to the state they were previously in. Handy when you your desktop is so full of opened windows and that you want to access, for example, a folder on your desktop.

Desktop Switching Applet. Makes switching between virtual

desktops as easy as one, two, three. See Virtual Desktops, page 59 for more information.

Screen Resolution Applet. Allows you to change the screen resolu-

tion. With higher resolutions you will have more space to run applications on your desktop. See Changing Screen Resolution, page 62, for more information.

7.1.3. Virtual Desktops

Virtual desktops give you more room to place your windows; they also allow you to better organize your windows by task.

Think of virtual desktops as having several screens available but with only one monitor. By default, there are two virtual desktops. To add or remove virtual desktops right-click on the desktop switching applet and select Con- ﬁgure Virtual Desktops from the pop-up menu. Using the slider at the top of the conﬁguration dialog will allow you to select up to 16 virtual desktops. Press OK once you are satisﬁed with your settings.

By default, virtual desktops are named Desktop N, where N is the desktop number. To give more meaningful names to your virtual desktops (such as Work, Play, Internet...), right-click on the desktop switching bar and select Conﬁgure Virtual Desktops from the pop-up menu. Click in the input ﬁeld of the desktop for which you wish to change the name and type in the new one. Pressing Apply will make the changes effective immediately. Press OK once you are satisﬁed with your settings.

When you log in into KDE the last virtual desktop you were in when you closed your last session is opened. To switch between virtual desktops just

Chapter 7. Using KDE

click on the desktop number in the desktop switching applet et voilà !

7.2. Personalizing your Desktop

7.2.1. Changing your Desktop’s Appearance

Figure 7-3. Changing KDE’s Color Scheme

To change the desktop color scheme choose Administer your system→Conﬁgure your desktop from the main menu. Choose LookNFeel→Colors from the control

center that appears.In the Color Scheme list are predeﬁned color schemes. Select the one you like and click on Apply.

You can also deﬁne your custom color scheme by clicking on the element you want to change (for example, Active Window to change the active window colors) or selecting it in the Widget Color pull-down list. Once the element (widget) is selected, click on the color bar to open KDE’s color selection dialog, choose the color you like and click on OK to apply it.

Clicking on Save Scheme will allow you save the color scheme for later use; you will be prompted for the scheme name, ﬁll it and click on OK. Clicking

Chapter 7. Using KDE

on Remove Scheme will remove the currently selected color scheme.

You are not asked for conﬁrmation before removing a color scheme. Therefore use the Remove Scheme button carefully.

Figure 7-4. Changing KDE’s Background Wallpaper

To change the desktop background, choose Administer your system→Conﬁgure your desktop from the main menu. In the control center that appears, select LookNFeel→Background. Select the background picture option in the Background section and background scaling, colors and blending in the Options

section.

Click on the Advanced Options button to adjust settings such as an external program to draw the background, the cache size for images, etc.

Chapter 7. Using KDE

All desktop background settings can be applied on a per-desktop basis using the Setting for desktop pull-down list. Please note that doing so consumes more memory.

7.2.2. Managing Desktop Icons

Adding Icons. To add an icon on the desktop simply right-click on the desktop’s background. A pull-down menu will appear in which you must choose Create New. Another menu will appear in which you must select the type of object to create on your desktop:

• Folder creates a new folder on your desktop where you can store ﬁles.

• File→Link to Application creates an application launcher. When you click on

it, the application will run as if you called it from a menu or the command line. Use it to have quick access to the applications you use most.

• File→Link to Location (URL) creates an icon giving you direct access to an

URL (typically a web page or a web site). Use it to add icons the sites you visit the most on your desktop.

The above list is not extensive. Actually, the choices you have in the menu will depend on the software you have installed on your system.

Please bear in mind that the forms you will have to ﬁll to complete the icon adding operation are different for each kind of object being created. However, their options are fairly simple.

Modifying Icons. Right-click on the icon you want to modify and select Pro- perties from the menu. You will then be able change the title (the string dis-

played under the icon), the icon picture itself, and other properties of that type of object (folder, application, URL, etc.). Once you are satisﬁed with your settings, click on the OK button.

Removing Icons. To remove an icon, right-click on it and select Delete from the menu that pops up to delete it permanently, or Move to Trash (from where you can restore it later on). In either case, you will be asked to conﬁrm before proceeding.

Chapter 7. Using KDE

7.2.3. Changing Screen Resolution

Figure 7-5. Available Screen Resolutions List

Clicking on the screen resolution changer applet will show you the list of all available sizes and refresh rates for your video card and monitor combination (see ﬁgure 7-5). The active screen size and refresh rate are marked with a tilde.

To change any parameter, simply select it from the list and a window will pop up asking you if you are satisﬁed with the settings (see ﬁgure 7-6). If you click on the Accept Conﬁguration button, the settings will be applied immediately, otherwise the previous settings are retained.

Figure 7-6. Accept New Resolution Settings?

Chapter 7. Using KDE

The higher the refresh rate, the steadier the image. Select the highest refresh rate possible for your video card and monitor combination to put less strain on your eyes.

To make the settings persist between sessions, choose Conﬁgure display from the menu and make sure that both Apply settings on KDE startup and Allow tray application to change startup settings are checked, otherwise your screen resolution settings will be lost when you quit your session.

7.3. KDE Sessions

KDE and its applications support sessions. This feature allows the system to save the state of all applications that are in use when the user logs out of the desktop environment, and to restore them when the user logs back in.

Please bear in mind that non-KDE applications, and even some KDE ones, may have limited session support. The degree of session recovery is up to the application, ranging from just opening the application again, to opening it along with all the ﬁles that were open inside that application.

By default, KDE automatically saves sessions whenever you log out of the desktop environment. To change the default behavior, open the Session Manager (Administer your system→Conﬁgure your desktop from the main menu. In the control center that appears, select Components→Session Manager), make your choices and click on the OK button once you are satisﬁed with your settings. They will be effective the next time you log into KDE.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

8.1. Managing your Files

File managers have grown to become multi-tasking applications, which do not only take care of basic tasks such as copying and moving ﬁles around. In fact, with Konqueror you are able to manage your ﬁles, browse a LAN, play MP3s, surf on the web (Konqueror only), and more.

In this section, we take for granted that you have used a ﬁle manager before, and that it is not necessary to describe elementary features. We will talk about Konqueror which is KDE’s default ﬁle manager.

8.1.1. Main Window

You access your ﬁle manager by clicking on the Home icon located on the top left of your desktop.

Figure 8-1. Konqueror

Chapter 8. Konqueror

The lower part of the window displays the current folder’s contents (by default, what your home directory contains). Each ﬁle or sub-directory is represented by an icon, although you can change that view through the View→

View Mode menu . That main view may also contain a sidebar (refer to Side- bar, page 66).

8.1.2. Sidebar

A sidebar may appear on the left side of the main view. The ﬁrst time you launch Konqueror you will not see it. To show/hide it, select Window→Show Navigation Panel (or use the F9 key.

Here are short deﬁnitions of the icons in Konqueror’s sidebar:

Icon Meaning

Show Navigation Panel. This icon lets you change the sidebar view, add new folders, and more.

Bookmarks. Where you can store your preferred web and FTP sites.

Devices. Gives you access to the CD-ROM, Floppy, and removable devices (such as USB keys under the Hard disk entry), and Remote Shared folders, such as NFS or SMB shares.

History. A list of the folders and network (web, FTP, etc.) sites you have visited during the current session.

Home Directory. Represents your personal folder in which you organize your personal ﬁles.

Network. Gives you access to FTP archives as well as to Mandrakelinux- and KDE-speciﬁc web sites (of course, you can add or delete entries too).

Root Folder. Lets you access your whole tree structure. Usually, you do not have sufﬁcient rights to manipulate ﬁles outside your home directory. Only the system administrator (root) possesses the rights to do so.

Services. Gives you access to the Audio CD Browser, Devices, Fonts, the LAN Browser and the Print System Browser.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Table 8-1. Konqueror Sidebar Icons

8.1.3. Copying, Moving, Linking and Deleting Files

Copying Files. Let’s imagine you want to copy test.png to the Documents fol- der. With Konqueror, you ﬁrst need to access the Window→Split View

Left/Right (or press the Ctrl-Shift-L keys) menu or the Window→Split View Top/Bottom (or press the Ctrl-Shift-T keys) menu. Your window will be du-

plicated and you will be able to drag’n’drop the test.png image ﬁle into the Documents folder. Once you let go the ﬁle on the folder, a pop up menu will

ask you whether you want to move, copy or link the ﬁle.

There are many ways to manipulate ﬁles within your ﬁle manager. Drag’n’drop, keyboard shortcut combinations, opening two ﬁle managers, etc. Choose the method you prefer (check out the Edit menu).

Moving Files. The same principle applies to moving ﬁles around. Instead, select Move Here from the pop-up menu once you release the ﬁle.

Linking Files. Linking ﬁles allows you to access them without actually copying them all around your home directory. Let’s imagine one of your ﬁles is deeply buried into the /home/queen/Music/Artists/FavoriteArtist/ directory and you want to access it quickly. Here’s how to proceed. With Kon- queror simply drag it to the desired location, release the mouse button and select Link Here.

Deleting Files. There are “safe” and “unsafe” ways to delete ﬁles. The safe way would be to move it to the Trash, while the unsafe one would be to delete it for good directly. To delete a ﬁle, select it and press the Del key. To restore it, double-click on the Trash icon on your desktop and drag the ﬁle(s) back into your browser. To delete trashed ﬁles, simply Empty Trash Bin by right-clicking on the Trash icon. To delete a ﬁle directly, right-click on it and select Delete.

8.1.4. Browsing Web Pages

If you frequently browse through directories containing HTML ﬁles, for example your distribution’s documentation, these directories generally contain a ﬁle called index.html.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Let’s take the /usr/share/doc/HTML/ directory as an example.Click on index.html and Konqueror will display that ﬁle’s contents, and you can

browse through the documentation, as if you were on the web.

Browsing the web with Konqueror is as easy as using a “real” web browser. Just type in the URL of the site you want to visit in the location bar and surf.

8.1.5. File Sharing

This feature allows you to share your documents with other people on the local network and access documents other people share. It also enables system administrators to provide users with common repositories where everyone can add, modify and consult ﬁles.

8.1.5.1. Sharing Files

If ﬁle sharing is activated through the Mandrakelinux Control Center you can right-click on folders in your Konqueror window and choose Share. It allows you to share one or as many folders as you like through NFS1or Samba2.

8.1.5.2. Browsing Shared Files with Konqueror

For LAN browsing to work, make sure the lisa package is installed. If not, you will have to start the lisa service after installing it.

You can browse all available shared ﬁles on the network by opening the LAN Browser section in the Services sidebar. All machines offering shared ﬁles will

1. NFS (Network File System) allows you to share, export/import ﬁles from/to your computer in a networked environment. Although the NFS setup is easier than the Samba one, it can only be used within a UNIX®-based system (like GNU/Linux). Moreover, NFS is an insecure protocol and should be used exclusively in a secure local environment.

2. SMB is a protocol by which PCs share resources such as ﬁles and printers. Win-

dows®and GNU/Linux (through Samba) and OS/2 operating systems, among others, support the SMB protocol. It can be considered an alternative to Netware and NFS.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

appear as folders under this section. Inside the host name folder appears one folder per protocol supported by this machine. Those may be:

FISH

This protocol relies on ssh communications. So every local machine having an ssh server running on it will allow you to connect to it (providing proper authentication) and browse all the folders you have access to.

NFS

Under this Remote Share folder the shares provided by UNIX®machines will be displayed.

SMB

Shares provided by Windows®or SMB-enabled machines will show up under this Remote Share folder.

8.2. Browsing the Web

8.2.1. Konqueror’s Web Browser Interface

You can launch the Konqueror web browser by clicking on this icon on your desktop or by selecting Surf the Internet→Browse the Web from the main menu. Then type in an URL in the Location bar.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Figure 8-2. Konqueror as a Web Browser

Tool bar. Contains all buttons used to navigate and perform common actions

(see Surﬁng the Web, page 70).

Location Bar. Where you enter a site’s URL (or a local ﬁle using file:// as the protocol part of the URL).

Bookmarks Bar. Contains buttons which give you quick access to your bookmarked (favorite) sites.

Page Display Area. Where the contents of the web sites and local ﬁles you browse are displayed.

8.2.2. Surﬁng the Web

The following table summarizes the most commonly used navigation buttons Konqueror’s web browser provides.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Button Keyboard

Shortcut

Alt-left_arrow

Alt-right_arrow

Esc

Table 8-2. Konqueror’s Web Browser Tool Bar Buttons

Function

Go back. Returns to the page visited before the current one. By clicking on it more than once, you can go back more than one page, but some pages use automatic redirection so this might not always work. Keeping this button pressed (or clicking on the little black triangle on its right) will show you a list of all the URLs you can access through this feature.

Go forward. Returns to the page visited after the current one being visited. The same back-button considerations apply.

Reload. Refreshes the current page. By default, Konqueror will ﬁrst look for the page in the browser’s cache (on-disk temporary storage space) and use the local copy. Press the Shift key while clicking on the reload button to force Konqueror to fetch the page from the Internet.

Stop. Aborts transferring the currently requested object and will therefore cancel the page currently being loaded. Notice that we use the word “object” instead of “page”. This is due to the fact that web pages are not only HTML code but images and maybe other media too.

8.2.3. Managing Bo okmarks

Bookmarks store the URLs of your favorite web sites so you don’t have to type their address again when you want to access them. You can classify them by subject, category, etc. To record a bookmark, simply press Ctrl-B. It will appear in the Bookmarks menu so you can recall it later to come back to that page.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Your Mandrakelinux system already has some bookmark categories predeﬁned which you can use as a guide to arrange yours. Selecting Bookmarks→ Edit Bookmarks from the browser’s menu will open the bookmarks manager shown in ﬁgure 8-3.

Figure 8-3. Konqueror’s Bookmarks Manager Dialog

Bookmarks are arranged as a tree, with all operations taking place on the currently selected tree node. The following operations are available:

• Create Folder. Click on this button to create a new folder. A dialog

will pop up asking you for the folder’s name: ﬁll it and click on OK. Use folders to group bookmarks by subject, category, etc. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-N.

• Create Bookmark. Click on this button to create a new bookmark

entry. A new entry will be added below the current node or inside the current folder. Click in the Bookmark or URL column and type the name and address of that site at the bottom of the Bookmark Editor. Click on the save button (top left) to conﬁrm the addition.

• Delete Object. Click on this button to delete the currently selected

object: either a bookmark, a separator or a folder. You won’t be asked for conﬁrmation, the object will be deleted immediately. Keyboard shortcut: Del.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

• Insert Separator. Select Insert→Insert Separator from the menu to add a se-

parating line below the current node. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-I.

• Rename. Click on a bookmark or a folder and change the Name value at

the bottom of the Bookmark Editor. Keyboard shortcut: F2.

• Change URL. Same procedures as for renaming a bookmark. Keyboard

shortcut: F3.

Bookmarks can be exported to different browser formats. Feel free to explore the File→Export menu. A standard dialog will pop up asking you for the bookmark’s ﬁle name (for example bookmarks.html for Mozilla). Type the ﬁle name and click on the Save button. Some export entries may not pop up the dialog. In those cases, bookmarks will automatically be exported to a location dependent of the browser format.

Bookmarks can also be imported from different browser’s formats through the File→Import menu.

Both export and import ﬁle dialogs are “intelligent”, in the sense that they will start from the current directory and will show the ﬁle types which best ﬁt the menu entry you’ve selected.

Once you are satisﬁed with your changes, click on this button to store

the new bookmarks. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-S.

8.2.4. Tabbed Browsing

Figure 8-4. Konqueror’s Browser Tabs

Konqueror’s web browser allows you to browse many web pages at a time by using a very nice feature called tabbed browsing. Instead of opening a new browser window every time you want to view another page you can open a new tab.

Clicking on this button in the tool bar, or choosing Location→New Tab

from the menu will create and open a new tab. You can now input the URL or select a bookmarked site to browse that site. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-ShiftN.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Clicking on this button in the tool bar will close the currently displayed tab. Click on a tab’s title to display the contents of that speciﬁc tab. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-W.

8.2.5. Konqueror Web Browser and Plugins

Figure 8-5. Plugins Settings under Konqueror

Plugins are programs which let your browser handle content other than HTML and graphics, such as animations, streaming audio, Java applets, and more. Konqueror uses Mozilla and netscape plugins. Select Settings→Conﬁgure Konqueror from the menu and open the Plugins section to set Konqueror’s plugins’ preferences (see ﬁgure 8-5).

After you have (optionally) downloaded and installed the corresponding plugins, click on the Scan for New Plugins button to have Konqueror recog-

Chapter 8. Konqueror

nize and set up the installed plugins: all directories listed in the Scan Folders list will be searched for.

You can view which plugins are set up in the Plugins tab. By default, only the Netscape Plugins (which give Konqueror access to Mozilla’s and netscape’s plugins) is installed. Once you’re satisﬁed with the settings, click on OK to make them effective.

Chapter 8. Konqueror

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

There are many graphical mail clients under GNU/Linux: KMail, Evolution, Mozilla Messenger, etc. KMail is a graphical mail client under GNU/Linux. It’s

integrated into a groupware client named Kontact. This chapter will describe how to conﬁgure and use KMail to compose, read and organize your e-mail messages.

You can launch KMail by selecting Internet→Mail→KMail from the

main menu. As we proceed, please note that only the minimum conﬁguration steps will be explained in this section. Feel free to explore the various conﬁguration options.

9.1. Conﬁguring KMail

The ﬁrst time you run KMail, the conﬁguration window opens automatically. Otherwise, click on Settings→Conﬁgure KMail to bring up the conﬁguration window. It is organized as a list of categories (on the left) and the conﬁguration options for each of those categories (on the right). First, an identity must be deﬁned under the Identities category. KMail offers you a template for the default identity based on your system’s account data (login, name, etc.). Click on the Modify button and, in the General tab, ﬁll Your name, Organization and Email address with your data (see ﬁgure 9-1).

1. If you have more than one e-mail address, for example one for your work and a private one, it is useful to create a different identity for each of them.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

Figure 9-1. Setting General User Parameters

Use the Cryptography, Advanced and Signature tabs to set up other parameters such as different “Reply-To” addresses, a GPG key for secure messages transmission, and so on. Once you are satisﬁed with your settings, click on OK and then on Apply: your default identity will be deﬁned.

To conﬁgure the mail servers, select the Network category. In the Sending tab click on the Add button, select SMTP as the transport type and click on OK. In the General tab, ﬁll the Name ﬁeld with a meaningful name for this server and the Host ﬁeld with the SMTP server’s name or IP address (see ﬁgure 9-2). The remaining ﬁelds can be left with their default values.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

Figure 9-2. Setting the Outgoing Mail Server

For security reasons, it may be that the outgoing mail server you use needs authentication. If this is the case, check the Server requires authentication box and complete the login and password provided by your ISP or network administrator.

To receive mail, you need to create at least one account. In the Receiving tab click on the Add button, select POP3 as the account type2and click on OK. In the General tab, complete the Name ﬁeld with a meaningful one for this account and the Host ﬁeld with the name or IP address of the POP3 server. Your ISP should have provided you with an e-mail user name and password which have to be entered in the Login and Password ﬁelds. Put a check mark in the Store POP Password in conﬁguration ﬁle to avoid having to type the

2. Since almost all ISPs provide POP3 accounts to retrieve mail, we used it in our example. If you have another account type, such as an IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) one, the conﬁguration will differ slightly.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

password each time messages are retrieved (see ﬁgure 9-3). Click on OK to add the account.

Figure 9-3. Conﬁguring a POP3 Mail Account

If you have a permanent network connection (such as DSL or cablemodem) checking the Enable interval mail checking box and selecting a period (in minutes) using Check interval will tell KMail to fetch messages periodically.

If you want KMail to handle more than one mail account just repeat the above procedure for each extra account. Once you are satisﬁed with your settings, click on OK. KMail is now ready to read and send mail on the Internet.

9.2. KMail’s Interface

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

Figure 9-4. Mail Client Interface

If the kontact package is not installed, the Kontact buttons on the left won’t show.

Toolbar. This is where the main action buttons lie. See table 9-1.

Messages List. Where information (subject, date, sender, etc.) about messa-

ges stored in the currently selected folder is displayed.

Message View Pane. Where the currently selected message’s contents are displayed.

Folders List. Where all folders are listed. The default folders are inbox (inco- ming messages), outbox (unsent templates), sent-mail (already sent messages), trash (deleted messages) and drafts (messages drafts).

Kontact Buttons. KMail is now a component of Kontact. On the left of the interface you have buttons to access Kontact’s components.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

The following table shows the most important buttons available in KMail’s toolbar, their equivalent keyboard shortcuts and a brief explanation of the functions they provide.

Button Keyboard

Function

Shortcut

Compose a New Message. You will need to

Ctrl-N

complete the To and Subject ﬁelds in the message-compose window.

Get new messages for all deﬁned e-mail accounts. Keep this button pressed to display a

Ctrl-L

list of all deﬁned accounts; select the one you want to get mail from in order to retrieve messages only for that account.

Reply to the author of the selected message. A

message-compose window will pop up with some ﬁelds already set.

Forward (send to a third party) the selected

message. You will need to ﬁll in the To ﬁeld in the message-compose window.

Delete the selected messages. Deleted messages are moved to the Trash folder. You can recover

messages moved into the trash folder, but deletion from the Trash folder cannot be undone: be careful!

Table 9-1. KMail’s Toolbar Buttons

Most of those buttons have a little black arrow on their right bottom corner. That means that a menu with additional related actions can be displayed by pressing the mouse button a little longer.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

9.3. Composing a Message

Figure 9-5. The Message-Compose Window

Toolbar. This is where the main composing buttons reside. See table 9-2

Message Body. The area where you will type the contents of your message.

Message Recipients. The list of all recipients of this message. By default, the

following options are shown:

• To: the “principal” intended recipient of this message.

• Cc (Carbon Copy): not-hidden “secondary” intended recipient(s) of this

message. All recipients will have access to the mail addresses to which this message is sent.

Select View→BCC from the menu to show the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) ﬁeld. These recipients are also “secondary” but are hidden from the other recipients of this message. No recipients of the message will have access to the other mail addresses to which this message was sent.

The following table shows the buttons which are mostly used in the messagecompose window, their equivalent keyboard shortcuts and a brief explanation of the functions they provide.

Chapter 9. Writing E-mails with KMail

Button Keyboard

Shortcut

Ctrl-Enter

Table 9-2. Message-Compose Toolbar Buttons

Function

Sends the message immediately (your network connection must be active). A copy of the message will be kept in the Sent-messages folder.

Queue the message. The message will be saved in the Outbox folder and will be sent the next time you request mail to be sent (File→ Send Queued Messages).

Attach a ﬁle to the message. This function is also accessible through the Attach→ Attach File menu. A standard ﬁle dialog will pop up. Select the ﬁle you want to attach and click on OK. Repeat for multiple ﬁles.

Chapter 10. Oﬃce Work

10.1. Word Processor

This section will give you a brief introduction to OpenOﬃce.org Writer’s word processing functions.

In order to make the text a little easier to read, we will alternate between the popular OOo acronym and the very long, yet full and correct OpenOﬃce.org name.

10.1.1. OpenOﬃce.org Writer

OpenOﬃce.org Writer is the part of the OpenOﬃce.org suite which provides the word processing functions. OpenOﬃce.org Writer can read most popular Ofﬁce formats, easing the transition from, and ensuring compatibility with, other Ofﬁce suites.

10.1.1.1. Starting

To launch OpenOﬃce.org Writer, select Oﬃce→Wordprocessors→OpenOﬃce.org Writer from the main menu.

You can also open it from any other OOo application screen, by selecting File→New→Text Document, which will open a blank OOo Writer document.

When you ﬁrst launch OpenOﬃce.org Writer, a dialog will show up asking you whether you prefer to use the Microsoft®or OpenOﬃce.org format to save your ﬁles.

Your decision depends on whether you plan to exchange a lot of ﬁles with people who only use Microsoft®tools. If this is the case, click Use the Microsoft ® Word ﬁle format, but be warned that it is not perfectly supported. Also this is only the default format and can always be overridden by changing the File type in the Save as dialog.

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

10.1.1.2. Interface

Figure 10-1. OpenOfﬁce.org Writer’s Main Window

10.1.2. Using the Word Processor

10.1.2.1. Styles

Word processor users often waste a lot of time formatting (changing paragraph alignment, font family, weight and size, etc.) their documents instead of using that time to concentrate on document structure and document content writing.

Styles provide a structure-centric approach to writing documents with a word processor, while normalizing document formatting and layout, and easily automating the generation and maintenance of table of contents (TOC). In OpenOﬃce.org Writer, styles are handled using the Stylist.

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

Clicking on this icon in the tool bar will open it. It can also be opened by choosing Format→Stylist from the menu bar, or by pressing the F11 key.

When you have a... Then apply the ... style

Chapter Title Heading 1

Section Title Heading 2

Sub-Section Title Heading 3

Sub-Subsection Title Heading 4

Paragraph Default, Text Body, First Line Indent

List Item Standard, Text Body, Text Body Indent

Table 10-1. Suggested Styles

Use the styles listed in table 10-1, as a guide. Select the region of the document to apply the style to, and in the Stylist window, double-click on the style you want to apply to that region.

The styles you use from the Stylist automatically become available in the styles drop-down list (the ﬁrst one in the format bar), so you have the most used styles handy.

10.1.2.2. Margins

You can always adjust margins by hand with the ruler, but if you want to format a long document, this may not be the best solution. This is where the Stylist comes in handy.

By clicking on this icon in the Stylist, you will access the page formatting section of the Stylist. First, make a copy of the Default style:

1. Right-click on the Default item in the stylist.

2. Choose New... from the menu which pops up.

3. Assign a Name to your new style. The Next Style ﬁeld will be updated

accordingly when you select it. For the purpose of this example, Default Copy will be used as the style name.

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

4. Click on OK to insert your new style into the list of available styles.

Then, right-click on your newly created style item and choose Modify... from the pop-up menu. The Page Styles: Default Copy window will appear. Open the Page tab and modify the margins to your liking.

This is the same as choosing the Format→Page menu.

While looking at the Page Styles: Default Copy window, you probably noticed that you could modify many formatting elements such as the Background, Header, Footer, etc. For example, if 90% of your work with a word processor consists of writing business letters with a predeﬁned format, you could set it up right now, thereby saving lots of time.

If you modify an existing style, you will overwrite that style’s original settings. If you feel that you have made a mistake, simply click on the Reset button to return to the last saved settings.

10.1.2.3. Lists

Sometimes paragraphs contain element lists, to enumerate the properties of an object (“unordered” or “bullet” list), or the steps to be performed in order to accomplish some task, (an “ordered” or “numbered” list, for instance).

Clicking on this button will format the selected text into an unordered list. Selecting the list items and choosing Format→ Numbering/Bullets from the menu will allow you to change the bu-

llet type from a predeﬁned set.

Clicking on this button will format the selected text into an ordered list. The same rules as for unordered lists apply regarding to the numbering format.

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

10.1.2.4. Page Headers and Footers

By default page headers and footers are common to all pages of a document. Use them to describe certain aspects about the document’s content, for example: page number, total number of pages, chapter, section, document’s title, etc.

Choosing Insert→Header→Default from the menu will add a page header to your document, and choosing Insert→Footer→Default will add a page footer to your document. Just type the header/footer text you want to be shown or use one or more of the Insert→Fields menu items to compose the header/footer.

10.1.3. Going Further

If you wish to learn more on the usage of OpenOﬃce.org Writer, you should consult the tutorial available on the OpenOfﬁce Support (http://www. openofficesupport.com/writertutorial.html) Web site.

Also don’t hesitate to refer to the OpenOﬃce.org Writer’s help which is accessible through the Help→Contents menu. You are bound to ﬁnd the answers to your questions. Topics are accessible through a table of contents, an index is available as well, as a contextual search tool.

OpenOﬃce.org Writer is able to export your documents in PDF format (File→Export as PDF). This allows you to publish your documents in the Adobe®Reader®format.

10.1.4. Conclusion

Word processing could be considered as one of the most performed actions with a personal computer. As you have read above, OpenOﬃce.org Writer is a tool which not only gives you everything you need to create simple or complex documents, but is also compatible with existing Ofﬁce ﬁle formats. Enjoy creating your documents with OpenOﬃce.org Writer!

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

10.2. Spreadsheet

This section will give you a brief introduction to OpenOﬃce.org Calc’s spreadsheet functions.

We take for granted that you know why you intend to use a spreadsheet and will not delve deeply into application-speciﬁc (accounting, ﬁnancial, simulation, etc.) considerations.

10.2.1. What’s a Spreadsheet?

Spreadsheets are electronic replacements for an accountant’s ledger book and calculator. This software uses columns and rows to allow math operations to be performed on previously entered data. Nowadays, spreadsheets do a lot more as they are often used as (very) simple databases or as a charts and graphs application, even though that was not the original intention of such software.

Figure 10-2. Rows, Columns and Cells

Rows are named 1, 2, etc. Columns are named A, ..., Z, AA, AB, etc. The intersection of a row and a column is a cell, and its name is composed of the column and row attributes, for example: C3 (shown in ﬁgure 10-2). OpenOﬃ- ce.org Calc highlights the active row and column names.

10.2.2. Using the Spreadsheet

To launch OpenOﬃce.org Calc, select Use oﬃce tools→Create a spreadsheet from the main menu.

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

When you ﬁrst launch OpenOﬃce.org Calc, a dialog will show up asking you whether you prefer to use the Microsoft®or OpenOﬃce.org format to save your ﬁles.

Your decision depends on whether you plan to exchange a lot of ﬁles with people that use only Microsoft®tools. If this is the case, click Use the Micro- soft® Excel ﬁle format, but be warned that it is not perfectly supported. Also note that this is only the default format and can always be overridden by changing the File type in the Save as dialog.

OpenOﬃce.org Calc is an enterprise-ready spreadsheet application and includes many features way beyond the scope of this document. Consult Going

Further, page 96, for more information on how to make full use of OpenOﬃ- ce.org Calc.

The following sections will explore basic functions such as entering data and formulas in the spreadsheet and adding graphics to represent that data. An example of an imaginary company’s monthly expenses and sales ﬁgures will be used.

10.2.2.1. Entering Data

To enter data into a cell (either text or numbers) use the arrow keys to navigate to that cell or click in the cell and type the data in it, pressing the Enter key when you are ﬁnished. You can also use the Tab key or the Shift-Tab keys to move to the cell on the right or on the left, respectively.

The auto-completion feature simpliﬁes data entry. Auto-completion “guesses” the next cell’s data using the current cell’s value as a base. It works not only for numeric data, but also for the days of the week, the months of the year, and others. Generally speaking, any kind of data which can be associated to a series of consecutive integral numbers can be entered using auto-completion.

To use auto-completion put your mouse over the cell “handle” (the little black square located at the bottom right of the cell border), click on it and drag the cell. The cell values will be shown in a tool-tip (see ﬁgure 10-3). Once the desired ﬁnal value is shown, release the mouse button and the cells will be completed.

Cell data can also be sorted according to different criteria (by column or row, depending on how you arrange your data). To do so, ﬁrst select the cells you

Chapter 10. Ofﬁce Work

Figure 10-3. Simplifying Data Entry Using Auto-Completion

want to sort and then open the sort options dialog choosing Data→Sort from the menu.

Make sure you also select columns and rows which act as“headers” for the data (in our example, the column B which contains the months) in order for those to “follow” the sorting of the data.

In the Sort Criteria tab select the columns/rows to sort data by and the sort order Ascending or Descending. The Options tab contains custom sort order settings, whether to perform a case sensitive sort or not and the direction of the sorting (top to bottom sorts data disposed in columns and left to right sorts data disposed in rows), among others. Click on the OK button once you are satisﬁed with the options and the selected cells will be sorted.

10.2.2.2. Adding Formulas

Formulas can be used to “automate” the spreadsheet allowing you, for example, to run complex simulations. Within cells, formulas are deﬁned by preceding all cell data with the = sign. Anything else is treated as “static” data.

Mandrakesoft Mandrakelinux user guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Discovering Mandrakelinux

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

Preface

1. About Mandrakelinux

1.1. Contacting the Mandrakelinux Community

1.2. Join the Club

1.3. Subscribe to Mandrakeonline

1.4. Purchasing Mandrakesoft Products

1.5. Contribute to Mandrakelinux

Chapter 1. Installation Warning

Chapter 2. Before Installation

2.2. Creating a Floppy Boot Disk

2.2.1. Creating a Boot Disk With Windows

2.2.2. Creating a Floppy Bo ot Disk From GNU/Linux

2.3. Supported Hardware

2.3.1. Notes About Winmodems

Chapter 3. Installation with DrakX

3.1. The Mandrakelinux Installer

3.2. Choosing your Language

3.3. License Terms of the Distribution

3.4. Installation Class

3.6. Partitioning Your Disk

3.8. Root Password

3.9. Adding a User

3.10. Installing a Bootloader

3.11. Checking Miscellaneous Parameters

3.11.1. Summary

3.11.2. Time Zone Options

3.11.4. Selecting Available Services at Boot Time

3.12. Installing Updates from the Internet

3.13.1. Advanced Options

3.14. How to Uninstall Linux

4.1.1. Start Menu

4.1.2. Applications

4.1.3. Control Panel/System Preferences

4.1.4. DOS Shell

4.1.5. Network Neighborhood

4.1.6. C: Drive

4.1.8. Floppy Disk Drives

4.1.9. My Documents

4.1.10. The Applications Needed to Open Some Kinds of Document

4.2. A Brave New World!

4.2.2. Multiple Tasking

4.2.3. Multiple Desktops

4.2.4. Full Desktop Customization

4.2.5. Thousands of Free Applications

4.2.6. No More Reboots!

Chapter 5. Linux for Beginners

5.1. Introduction

5.3. Getting Ready for your Session

5.4. Beginning your Session

5.4.2. Identifying Yourself

5.5. Using your Graphical Environment

5.5.1. The Mandrakelinux Desktop

5.5.2. Accessing Applications

5.5.3. Opening a Window on the Desktop

5.5.4. Managing Desktops

5.6. Logging Out of your Session

Chapter 6. Where to Get Documentation

6.1.2. Internet Resources

6.1.2.1. Mandrakeclub

6.1.2.2. Mandrakesecure

6.2. GNU/Linux Useful Resources

6.2.1. The /usr/share/doc Directory

6.2.2. The Man Pages

Chapter 7. Using KDE

7.1. Discovering the K Desktop Environment

7.1.1. The Desktop

7.1.2. The Panel

7.1.3. Virtual Desktops

7.2. Personalizing your Desktop

7.2.2. Managing Desktop Icons

7.2.3. Changing Screen Resolution

7.3. KDE Sessions