1. Where's my...?

Experienced Windows® and Mac OS® X users are normally accustomed to certain functions and/or concepts which are often treated differently in GNU/Linux.

1.1. Start Menu

In Windows®, most applications and system tools are accessed through the so-called Start Menu; this concept remains more or less the same, except it's now called the Main Menu: in KDE you open it by clicking on the yellow star at the bottom left of your screen.

For users coming from Mac OS® X, Mandrakelinux's Main Menu can be considered as a replacement for functions from both the Apple Menu, located at the far left of the menu bar, and the Applications folder available in the Finder.

1.2. Applications

The wide variety of applications is a large differentiator between GNU/Linux and Windows®. Mandrakelinux installs many more applications onto your system, and clicking on the main menu will give you a wide range of choices depending on what you would like to do. There are many fully-fledged applications available to accomplish many common tasks such as office work (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), e-mail handling, web browsing, software development, multimedia file handling, etc.

Mac OS® X users may find similarities between Mac OS® X and GNU/Linux applications, because Mac OS® X is based on BSD®, a UNIX®-like system on which GNU/Linux is also based. Moreover, other applications designed for the desktop have been ported to, or are available under, the X11 implementation available for Mac OS® X.

You may also install a large number of applications through the RpmDrake utility (please refer to the Chapter 13, Package Management through Rpmdrake).

1.3. Control Panel/System Preferences

The Control Panel in Windows® and the System Preferences utility in Mac OS® X are replaced by the Mandrakelinux Control Center under Mandrakelinux. It can be accessed by choosing System+Configuration->Configure your computer in the main menu. With this interface, you have the ability to modify most of your system's settings with graphical tools.

1.4. DOS Shell

GNU/Linux is still very fond of shell environments. Unlike Windows® the popularity of the shell is not fading away as is evident by the availability of the shell in Mac OS® X. By default, Mandrakelinux installs bash, a truly powerful shell environment. You can access it by opening the main menu and choosing System+Terminals->Konsole.

[Note]Note

Few of your DOS commands or functions will work in a Linux shell. Take a look at the Introduction to the Command Line chapter in the Reference Manual to discover their equivalents and much, much more. Have fun, you now have a real shell at hand!

1.5. Network Neighborhood

GNU/Linux uses TCP/IP by default, not SMB (the Windows® network protocol), so there's nothing like a network neighborhood icon to give you a view of the network you're in. However, you may use the LinNeighborhood application to give you similar functionality.

Konqueror can also accomplish the same tasks. Just type smb:/ in the location bar, and all of the shared Windows® resources on the network will appear. Please remember that for this to work, the samba-client package must be installed.

See Section 3.5, “File Sharing” for more information.

1.6. C: Drive

The “lettered drive” is a concept exclusive to Windows®. On UNIX® systems, the drive notion (C:, D:, ..., Z:) is replaced by “mount points”. From a user perspective, you're always accessing directories. Your system will use configuration files to instruct the file system how to “load” all relevant disks, disk partitions and remote systems, and then assign them to a specified directory, generally under the /mnt directory. While this concept is similar to that found in Mac OS® X, it is slightly different. What is mounted under /mnt with GNU/Linux is mounted under /Volumes in Mac OS® X but is made available as a “root file system” in the Finder.

1.7. CD-ROM Drives

The same concept as for C: applies here. CD-ROMs are mounted in /mnt/cdrom. To access the CD-ROM, just click on the desktop icon and the CD-ROM's contents will appear in a new window.

[Note]Note

Things are a bit different for audio and data CDs: upon inserting an audio CD in the drive, the CD player is automatically loaded. Please see Section 1, “Audio Applications”.

1.8. Floppy Disk Drives

Like CD-ROMs and disk partitions, floppy disks are mounted and will appear on /mnt/floppy. This feature directly supports reading Windows® diskettes.

[Tip]Tip

Icons are displayed on your desktop to access all your removable media devices: floppy, CD-ROM, ZIP, USB keys, and others.

1.9. My Documents

Under Mandrakelinux every user has a directory called the user's home directory: that is the place to store the user's documents. For example, Peter should store documents in /home/peter. A My Documents directory could be created inside the user's home to “mimicWindows® behaviour.

The home directory concept is analogous to the C:\Winnt\Profiles\user_name\ or C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\ directories in Windows NT®, Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP and is explained in Chapter 7, Using KDE.

Under Mac OS® X this is very similar. The home directory's equivalent is /Users/user_name which contains a directory called Documents.

1.10. The Applications Needed to Open Some Kinds of Document

GNU/Linux can open most standard file formats: PNG pictures, Rich Text Format texts, PostScript printouts, etc. These file formats should always be preferred as they facilitate exchange of data between applications, and they ensure your freedom to change to another application and do not lock you into a given operating system.

You may also have many files in proprietary formats such as Microsoft® Excel or Microsoft® Word documents. OpenOffice.org is just one application which can handle most popular formats for office applications (see Section 1, “Word Processor” and Section 2, “Spreadsheet”).

[Note]Note

We specifically mention office documents because they are widely used. Due to space constraints we cannot cover every single Windows® application and its GNU/Linux equivalent. However, there is a high probability that you will find GNU/Linux equivalents for all the programs you used under Windows® or Mac OS® X. To get an idea of GNU/Linux equivalents of Windows® applications, you can consult this table of equivalents.