Getting Around the Gnome Desktop Environment

IEEE Pizza-Talk Series --- October 8, 2004

Dr. Giolma

First Things First: Getting logged on:

Before you enter your username, you can choose (Sessions) between Sun's CDE (Common Desktop Environment) and GNU's Gnome Desktop. The icon on the right tells you what's chosen now. The default is “whatever you used last”
As with most logins, the username comes first, then the password.

Desktop and Button Bar

Desktop Icons
- File manager
- Floppy access
- Trash Can
- Start Here - Customizations
Button Bar
- RedHat - "Start Bar"
- World - Web Browser (Mozilla)
- Email - Evolution
- Printing Manager
- Workspaces - Just like CDE
- Icons for running programs - Just like Windows
- Volume Control
- Red Flashing ! - Ignore - Automatic Update Program
- Clock

GNOME Window Controls

Patterned on Windows - from Right to Left
X - close window
Maximize Window
Minimize Window
Window Menu

Getting a terminal:

Right-click on the background, choose Open Terminal
Choose RedHat/ System Tools/ Terminal

Getting a text editor:

To access a plain text editor, open the Applications menu (RedHat/ Accessories/ Text Editor)
You can also right-click in the file manager and choose your favorite text editor.

Getting at your files:

The Desktop panel icon that looks like a file folder (it is the top one) one from the left) gives you access to your home directory. This file manager gives you a (hopefully) familiar look into your personal file space. It allows you to create directories, drag and drop files, delete files by dragging them to the Trash icon on the desktop and many other possible actions.
Alternatively, use the terminal to manipulate files, and directories.

Getting help:

You can press the F1 key on the keyboard or chose Help on most applications to get context-sensitive help.
man pages are also available from the terminal (type "man man" without the quotes).

Workspaces

There are four available full screen desktops available for you to use. The are shown in miniature on the front panel. Workspaces allow you to have a lot of windows open and programs running but not all in the same view. They allow you to reduce clutter by having fewer items shown in any one workspace. Also you can organize your work based on workspace. That is, you can check your e-mail in workspace four, while running Matlab in workspace two.

One word of caution programs left running as you log out may be restarted when you log back in. This goes for programs in all workspaces. So before logging out, check all your workspaces to make sure there are no open or minimized windows left. It can cause problems as you log on and the systems starts up 23 terminals and six copies of Netscape!

Customization

You can customize the look and feel of GNOME using the Start Here desktop Icon. The possible customizations include changing the color scheme, the backdrop, the screen saver, and others.

Printing

Selecting Print from the file menu of most any program will print to Engr-4MPlus, the printer in the Core room. However, by using the print manager, available from the front panel, you can see what other printers are possible to print to, and to see what print jobs are currently lined up for each printer.
Also, from the File manager, you can drag any Postscript or plain text file onto the printer icon on the front panel to print the file without having to open a program to print the file. However, this ONLY works with Postscript (.ps) and plain text (possibly .txt) files. DO NOT drag any other type of file to the printer icon; you will not get what you wanted, I promise.

Leaving

To logout, select RedHat/ Log Out.
When you log out, you have the option to save the current setup (including running programs) or to leave the setup as it was when you logged in.

More Options

KDE, another desktop environment, is available on the Linux machines for those who what to use it. On the main login screen, just choose Sessions/ KDE. This is similar to GNOME but looks a bit more like Windows.
GNOME is also available on the Suns for those who want to use it. This has a somewhat different appearance from what you've seen today (the button bar is in a different order, the main RedHat menu is on the top of the screen, etc), but works about the same.

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