Introducing the X Window System
Introducing and exploring the GNOME desktop environment
Exploring the GNOME desktop
Using GNOME windows
Making GNOME icons
Exploring the GNOME Panel
Adding GNOME Panels
Exiting from GNOME and X
Modifying the look of your desktop
Introducing GNOME applications
Configuring MIME types
The Red Hat Linux operating system provides two interactive interfaces for you to work from: the text-based command-line interface (CLI), as we describe in Chapter 4, and the graphical X Window System. The command-line interface is similar to the old Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) environment, which requires you to feed individual commands to the operating system; you can use the GNOME Terminal (emulator) as your CLI. The X Window System, also known simply as X, provides a graphical “point-and-click” environment from which most people prefer to work.
Red Hat Linux provides two desktop environments for you to use: GNOME and KDE, or the K Desktop Environment. Both GNOME and KDE run on top of X, and both environments include a menu system to access utilities, applications, and shortcuts in the form of icons and other numerous other enhancements. Using either of these desktop environments makes using Red Hat Linux as your workstation easy and pleasurable.
GNOME is the default desktop environment for Red Hat Linux. Red Hat also gives you the option of installing KDE, an excellent system that many people prefer. However, because of limited space in this book, we discuss only GNOME.
TipThe excellent Red Hat Linux “minibook” describes KDE in more detail.
In this chapter, you find out a little about X and the basics for working with GNOME. You also get to mess around with the GNOME Panel and desktop (the GNOME Panel is similar to the taskbar in Windows computers). We show you some simple but effective maneuvers to manage your desktop and describe some applications.