Day 12
well the 1GB of ram has not arrived yet so the testing I wanted to do has to wait a while, but in the meantime i changed my session back from gnome to the default, KDE.
if we take a look at the default desktop I'll describe what each icon does starting from the lower left corner
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201016888.jpg" data-fileid="1020">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201016888.jpg[/img]</a>
Clicking on the blue circle with PC inside it brings up the
Applications, tasks and desktop sessions menu which gives you access to pretty much everything, sorted into three main sections which are
Most used applications (what you used last),
All Applications, and
Actions (for configuring the computer, connecting to other computers and so on. To Windows users, this is the equivalent of the Start menu.
Next, we have the
Show Desktop icon, which does just that, it minimises all running applications so that we can see the desktop.
The third icon is called
Personal Files and clicking it brings up a konqueror window which allows you to browse your files (media and so on). If you leave your cursor over a photo for example, you will be presented with a nice thumbnail of same along with exif info about the photo. Holding the cursor over an mp3 file or other media file (avi for example) will start playing the audio of that file, rather nice once you are aware of it (as a feature) but can be confusing the first time it happens.
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201017329.png" data-fileid="1021">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201017329.png[/img]</a>
Next up we have Control Center, which is the control center for KDE itself, useful if you want to change how KDE looks and acts.
The
Configure your computer - Administration Center is the next icon and requires the root password to function as some of the actions in there can make the computer unbootable. Strangely, PCLinuxOS doesn't stay consistant and the name of the application we just started now becomes
PCLinuxOS Control Center, it's a small niggle but why not have just called it a mixture of the two, like
Configure your PCLinuxOS computer. Anyway, once in you have a wealth of choices shown below which include:-
Sharing, Groupware, Online Administration, Boot, Hardware, Mount Points, Network & Internet, Security and System.
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201031954.png" data-fileid="1022">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201031954.png[/img]</a>
So if you want to get wireless configured then you'll probably want to know this area (unless you are happy to play with the CLI - command line interface)
Next up we have
Package Manager which anyone familiar with a debian based distro (Debian, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva) will know, called synaptic, it's a gui front end for apt-get. This gui is great for installing (and removing) software and it's dependancies easily, however i'd still like to see it improved even further, such as the ability to mark several packages in one fell swoop without having to mark a range of them individually.
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201032987.png" data-fileid="1023">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201032987.png[/img]</a>
While you are in synaptic, take a look at the settings option, followed by repositories. By default there is only one selected, but you can select other ones closer to you (for faster download of packages) or you can add new ones for special software installation.
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201033008.png" data-fileid="1024">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_01_2008/post-1-1201033008.png[/img]</a>
