While developing Ubuntu, they had the security in mind. One important thing of Ubuntu you should know, is that you can't use the Root user. Maybe you haven't heard of a Root user ever, in that case you don't have to worry. If you ever did hear of a Root user, then you also know that you can do more with a Root user then a Windows Administrator account. You can fuck you whole computer up in seconds!
Usually people with basic or no knowledge at all of Linux, are able to delete files without knowing what the are doing. I have been there, believe me.
So, our friend from Ubuntu have decided that you can't use the Root user and you have to type SUDO before every command where you need Root privileges for. Just remember SUDO as SuperUserDO. In this case, the Root user is the Super User.
I bet you have already logged in your fresh installed Linux machine, and you maybe have already explored the menu's as well. You probably already have realised that it's looks quit similar to Windows. But I will tell you a secret, the screen you are looking at is called a Gnome desktop, which is used in many other Linux distributions as there default desktop manager. The other one which is used a lot is KDE which is the default desktop manager for Open SuSE for example. Fedora Linux (sponsored by RedHat) is using Gnome as there default window manager. Just have a look at Google Pictures and look for Gnome screenshots. Some are really beautiful.
On your desktop, in the bottom left corner you will a button to open the default Gnome menu. There are different options which you can explore. A nice section is Office for example. You will notice a fresh installation of OpenOffice (version 2) which can you can use as a MS Office alternative. To bad that version 2 comes with the default installation of Ubuntu and not the latest version (version 3). If you start up Writer you will notice a Word processor which looks a little bit like the old MS Office versions. It's free software, so don't expect to much of it, in my future blogs I will explain how to install Office 2007 for example on Linux.
You will also notice other software in various sections. Even software which you will never use. So, we are going to start with installing some software, deleting is not up to me and something you can do easily yourself.
Go to the Gnome menu and then go to Administration, here you will see Synaptic Package Manager. This tool is going to be your biggest friend. This is the graphical interface for the "sudo apt-get" command which is still widely used by many people who are working on a Debian distro.
If you start the tool up, you will have to enter the Root password first. If you left every setting default, you will notice different software sections on the left side, and a "Quick search" box in the top middle. Now we are going to search for the following software to spice your fresh installation a litte bit up ;-)
When you select a package, you can select install. If the package manager want's to install aditional software, say yes. Or cancel the installation if you don't want this additional software. To make software work, you don't always have an option.
- sun-java (select the latest package, at this time it's sun-java6-jre)
- awn-manager (you can use this program to get this OS X bar on the bottom of your screen)
- deluge-torrent (the easiest bittorrent client at the moment available for Linux)
- screenlets (nice program to show Widgets in Linux)
- adobe-flashplugin
Now we say apply and the software should be installed when everything is finished. At the various software sections you should be able to see the new installed software. Just start it up and play around a bit to get used to Ubuntu a bit.
Another important thing you should keep in mind, is that Linux doesn't use a C or D or whatever drive Windows uses. Linux is just using "/" (root) and a swap partition which you don't see in your file browser anyway. So we don't work with drive letters any more. Your user data in Ubuntu is stored in the home folder which you can find in "/home/[username]/"
Now we want to get rid of the old OpenOffice 2 installation. Use the package manager and search for "openoffice.org-core" and select remove. Make sure you also delete all of the other files which has to do with Openoffice.org 2. In my situation some files are mixed up, and that can be anoying. After the removal you should see that the programs in the Office section like Calc or Writer are gone. Now, go to www.openoffice.org and download the latest version for Ubuntu. The file should be a DEB file which is the installer file for Debian distributions like Ubuntu. You can find the file you need on the following location: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US
After the download is finished, you can dubble click the file and it should install OpenOffice 3.
Now the basic setup is done. Just click around and customize your desktop whatever you like. This is the fastest way to learn the basics of Linux. In the following blogs I will give more indept information about how to use Ubuntu at work for example.
No comments:
Post a Comment