About this User Guide

Abstract

Welcome and thank you for choosing Mandrakelinux! This manual was written in order to give you a better understanding of the Mandrakelinux system. In it we will focus on graphical applications which will allow you to perform your daily tasks, such as writing documents and e-mails, surfing the web and listening to music. We will also show you how to configure your desktop to your liking, install software, and finally, we'll give you some tips and tricks to help you fix common and not so common problems.

This book is divided into 5 parts. We start off with Installing Mandrakelinux, where you will learn what you need to know before you actually install Mandrakelinux onto your system (see Chapter 1, Installation Warning, and Chapter 2, Before Installation); and how to correctly install and configure your Mandrakelinux distribution (Chapter 3, Installation with DrakX) by describing the preparation, installation and post-installation procedures.

The next part (Discover) is an introduction to Linux basics. We discuss the Linux paradigm by comparing it to other OSes in Chapter 4, Migrating to Linux from Windows® and Mac OS® X. In order to help new users, we wrote Chapter 5, Linux for Beginners. In it we describe the first steps a new user must master and we explain concepts such as “logging in and out”, security tips, and more. The following chapter (Chapter 6, Where to Get Documentation) will guide you through a fairly exhaustive list of documentation sources which you can consult in order to attain a better understanding of Linux. A Mandrakelinux-specific section points to numerous in-house resources which you can find on the Net. We close this part by speaking about the popular KDE graphical environment (see Chapter 7, Using KDE).

In the next part (Using the Internet) we show you how to browse the web (Chapter 8, Surfing with Mozilla) and send e-mails (Chapter 9, Sending E-mail with Mozilla) using the Mozilla suite.

The next part of this manual (Use) deals with everyday applications. We discuss the OpenOffice.org suite (see the section called “Word Processor”, and the section called “Spreadsheet”), file managers (see the section called “Managing your Files”) and printers (see the section called “Printing and Faxing from Applications”). We then tackle the world of multimedia by reviewing audio and movie applications (see the section called “Audio Applications”, and the section called “Movie Applications”), as well as CD burning (see the section called “CD Burning”).

Finally we go through more technical aspects of the Mandrakelinux system (Advanced Uses):