User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop

Nah Soo Hoe and Colin Charles

Published by

the United Nations Development Programmes

Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP)

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Web: http://www.apdip.net/

Email: info@apdip.net

� UNDP-APDIP 2004

The material in this guide may be reproduced, republished and incorporated into further works provided acknowledgment is given to UNDP-APDIP.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

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Preface

This user guide is meant as an introductory guide for a user to use a modern personal computer (PC) running the Linux operating system. The main aim is to provide a self-learning guide on how to use a modern Linux desktop system. It assumes that the user has no prior knowledge of Linux or PC usage.

After going through the guide the reader should be in a position to start using a Linux desktop for both personal and office use. In particular she should be able to:

• access the Internet and use the WWW and Internet email

• manipulate and manage files, folders and the file system

• produce and print simple documents and presentation materials

• advance to become a power user by further self-learning and exploring

Linux has many distributions and sometimes the programs or tools used to perform a certain function can vary from distribution to distribution. This guide tries to be as generic as possible in the description of the features and functionalities. However, in some cases, especially some of the GUI desktop configuration tools, there is no really independent generic tool that can be used and each distribution has its own tool. In such cases, we have tried to illustrate their usage using Fedora Linux.

This guide was written on a Fedora Linux system and as such many of the screen shots reflect this. However, this should not be construed as an endorsement of this distribution of Linux over the others on the part of the authors.

Nah Soo Hoe and Colin Charles

July 2004