Linux Bible. Christopher Negus
the way some of the built-in features of GNOME 3 behave, you can change many of them with the GNOME Tweak Tool. This tool is not installed by default with the Fedora GNOME Live CD, but you can add it by installing the
gnome-tweaks package. (See Chapter 10, “Getting and Managing Software,” for information on how to install software packages in Fedora.) After installation, the GNOME Tweak Tool is available by launching the Advanced Settings icon from your Applications screen. Start with the Desktop category to consider what you might want to change in GNOME 3. Figure 2.10 shows the Tweak Tool displaying Appearance settings.
FIGURE 2.10 Change desktop settings using the GNOME Tweak Tool (Appearance settings).
If fonts are too small for you, select the Fonts category and click the plus sign next to the Scaling Factor box to increase the font size, or change fonts individually for documents, window titles, or monospace fonts.
Under Top Bar settings, you can change how clock information is displayed in the top bar or set whether to show the week number in the calendar. To change the look of the desktop, select the Appearance category and change the Icons theme and GTK+ theme as you like from drop-down boxes.
Starting with desktop applications
The Fedora GNOME 3 desktop live DVD comes with some cool applications that you can start using immediately. To use GNOME 3 as your everyday desktop, you should install it permanently to your computer's hard disk and add the applications you need (a word processor, image editor, drawing application, and so on). If you are just getting started, the following sections list some cool applications to try out.
Managing files and folders with Nautilus
To move, copy, delete, rename, and otherwise organize files and folders in GNOME 3, you can use the Nautilus file manager. Nautilus comes with the GNOME desktop and works like other file managers that you may use in Windows or Mac.
To open Nautilus, click the Files icon from the GNOME Dash or Applications list. Your user account starts with a set of folders designed to hold the most common types of content: Music, Pictures, Videos, and the like. These are all stored in what is referred to as your Home directory. Figure 2.11 shows Nautilus open to a Home directory.
FIGURE 2.11 Manage files and folders from the Nautilus window.
When you want to save files that you downloaded from the Internet or created with a word processor, you can organize them into these folders. You can create new folders as needed, drag and drop files and folders to copy and move them, and delete them.
Because Nautilus is not much different from most file managers that you have used on other computer systems, this chapter does not go into detail about how to use drag-and-drop and traverse folders to find your content. However, I do want to make a few observations that may not be obvious about how to use Nautilus:
Home folder You have complete control over the files and folders that you create in your Home folder. Most other parts of the filesystem are not accessible to you as a regular user.
Filesystem organization Although it appears under the name Home, your Home folder is actually located in the filesystem under the /home folder in a folder named after your username: for example, /home/liveuser or /home/chris. In the next few chapters, you learn how the filesystem is organized (especially in relation to the Linux command shell).
Working with files and folders Right-click a file or folder icon to see how you can act on it. For example, you can copy, cut, move to trash (delete), or open any file or folder icon.
Creating folders To create a new folder, right-click in a folder window and select New Folder. Type the new folder name over the highlighted Untitled Folder, and press Enter to name the folder.
Accessing remote content Nautilus can display content from remote servers as well as the local filesystem. In Nautilus, select Other Locations from the file menu. From the Connect to Server box that appears, you can connect to a remote server via SSH (secure shell), FTP with login, Public FTP, Windows share, WebDav (HTTP), or Secure WebDav (HTTPS). Add appropriate user and password information as needed, and the content of the remote server appears in the Nautilus window. Figure 2.12 shows an example of a Nautilus window prompting you for a password to log into a remote server over SSH protocol (ssh://192.168.122.81).
FIGURE 2.12 Access remote folders using the Nautilus Connect to Server feature.
Installing and managing additional software
The Fedora Live Desktop comes with a web browser (Firefox), a file manager (Nautilus), and a few other common applications. However, there are many other useful applications that, because of their size, just wouldn't fit on a live CD. If you install the live Fedora Workstation to your hard disk (as described in Chapter 9), you almost certainly will want to add some more software.
NOTE
You can try installing software if you are running the live medium. However, keep in mind that because writeable space on a live medium uses virtual memory (RAM), that space is limited and can easily run out. Also, when you reboot your system, anything that you install disappears.
When Fedora is installed, it is automatically configured to connect your system to the huge Fedora software repository that is available on the Internet. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can run the Add/Remove software tool to download and install any of thousands of Fedora packages.
Although the entire facility for managing software in Fedora (the yum and rpm features) is described in detail in Chapter 10, you can start installing some software packages without knowing much about how the feature works. Begin by going to the applications screen and opening the Software window. Figure 2.13 shows an example of the Software window.
With the Software window open, you can select the applications that you want to install by searching (type the name into the Find box) or choosing a category. Each category offers packages sorted by subcategories and featured packages in that category.
Select the spyglass icon in the upper-left corner, and then type a word associated with the software package that you want to install. You can read a description of each package that comes up in your search. When you are ready, click Install to install the package and any dependent packages needed to make it work.