Introducing UNIX and Linux

Installing Linux

Overview
Starting out
Preliminaries
      Collecting information about your system
      Installation options
Single boot
Dual boot
      Booting from CD/floppy
      Booting from your hard disk
      A partitionless install
      A dedicated Linux partition
Emulators
      VMware
      WINE
Installing Linux
      Installer software
      Linux partitioning
            Typical partitions
            User accounts
      LILO
The window manager
KDE
      Desktop help
      Applications
      The KDE Control Center
      File access and the command prompt
Summary

Applications

The KDE applications available to you do not have the same full-blown features of some of the more familiar Microsoft Windows applications. However, it is worth noting that they are all free and that upgrades can simply be downloaded from the Internet.

There are a number of applications available with the default KDE desktop. To start an application simply click on the K button on the KDE panel.

Some default KDE applications

KEdit	a simple text editor
KOrganizer	a calendar, 'to do' list, appointment organiser, etc.
Games	ranging from poker to mahjongg
KFax	a fax viewer
KGhostview	a postscript viewer
KPaint	a bitmap paint program
KMail	mail client
Kscd	a fast CDDB enabled CD player for the UNIX platform
KFM	a file manager and fully featured web browser

There are many more default applications than this and if you are looking for something that is more Microsoft Office-like in nature, KDE does have an office suite called KOffice (which can be downloaded from www.koffice.org).

KOffice applications

KWord	a frame-based professional standard word processor
KSpread	a spreadsheet application
KPresenter	a fully-featured presentation program
Kivio	a flowchart application program
Kontour	a vector drawing application
Krayon	an image manipulation program
Kugar	for generating business quality reports
Kchart	a graph and chart drawing tool

All the components of KOffice are compatible and you can therefore embed one KOffice component in another. For more information consult the web site.

There are many more non-KDE applications which you might like to explore; two applications of note are StarOffice, a popular Linux alternative to Microsoft Office, and Gimp, an image manipulation tool similar to Adobe Photoshop.