On GNOME, the About Me preferences dialog lets you set up personal information to be used with your desktop applications, as well as change your password. Clicking the Image icon in the top left corner opens a browser window where you can select the image to use. The Faces directory is selected by default with images you can use. The selected image is displayed to the right in the browser window. For a personal photograph, you can use the Pictures folder. This is the Pictures folder in your home directory. Should you place a photograph or image there, you can then select if for your personal image. The image will be used in the Login screen when showing your user entry. Should you want to change your password, you can click the Change password button at the top right.

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Linux Tags: desktop, information, personal

Most distributions now use the fontconfig method for managing fonts (fontconfig.org). You can easily change font sizes, add new fonts, and configure features like anti-aliasing. Both GNOME and KDE provide tools for selecting, resizing, and adding fonts.

Resizing Desktop Fonts

With very large monitors and their high resolutions becoming more common, one feature users find helpful is the ability to increase the desktop font sizes. On a large widescreen monitor, resolutions less than the native one tend not to scale well. A monitor always looks best in its native resolution. However, with a large native resolution like 1900 × 1200, text sizes become so small they are hard to read. You can overcome this issue by increasing the font size. Use the font tools on your desktop to change these sizes (System | Preferences | Look And Feel | Fonts on GNOME; for KDE, select the Fonts entry in the Control Center’s Appearance and Themes).

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Linux Tags: config, desktop, font

On GNOME, you use the Themes Preferences tool to select or customize a theme. Themes control your desktop appearance. When you open the Theme tool, a list of currently installed themes is shown. The GNOME theme is initially selected. You can move down the list to select a different theme if you wish. If you have downloaded additional themes from sites like art.gnome.org, you can click the Install button to locate and install them. Once installed, the additional themes will also be displayed in the Themes Preferences tool’s listing. If you downloaded and installed a theme or icon set from the Fedora repository, it will be automatically installed for you.

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Linux Tags: desktop, gnome, kde, theme

Two alternative desktop GUIs can be installed on most Linux systems: GNOME and KDE. Each has its own style and appearance. GNOME uses the Clearlooks theme for its interface with the distribution screen background and menu icon as its default.

It is important to keep in mind that though the GNOME and KDE interfaces appear similar, they are really two very different desktop interfaces with separate tools for selecting preferences. The Preferences menus on GNOME and KDE display very different selections of desktop configuration tools.

Though GNOME and KDE are wholly integrated desktops, they in fact interact with the operating system through a window manager—Metacity in the case of GNOME and the KDE window manager for KDE. You can use a different GNOME- or KDE-compliant window manager if you wish, or simply use a window manager in place of either KDE or GNOME. You can find detailed information about different window managers available for Linux from the X11 website at xwinman.org.

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Linux Tags: desktop, gnome, kde, xfce

For the command line interface, you are initially given a login prompt. The system is now running and waiting for a user to log in and use it. You can enter your username and password to use the system. The login prompt is preceded by the hostname you gave your system. When you finish using Linux, you first log out. Linux then displays exactly the same login prompt, waiting for you or another user to log in again. This is the equivalent of the Login window provided by the GDM. You can then log in to another account.

Logging In and Out with the Command Line

Once you log in to an account, you can enter and execute commands. Logging in to your Linux account involves two steps: entering your username and then entering your password. Type in the username for your user account. If you make a mistake, you can erase characters with the BACKSPACE key.

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Linux Tags: command, login, shell, shutdown