2. 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 will 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). Then we will show you 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, Accessing 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).

We then tackle Internet applications (Using the Internet). We explain how to send e-mails using the KMail component of the Kontact suite (Chapter 8, Writing E-mails with KMail) and how to browse the web using Firefox (Chapter 9, Surfing the Web with Firefox).

Everyday applications is the topic of the next part (Use). We discuss the OpenOffice.org suite (see Section 1, “Word Processor”, and Section 2, “Spreadsheet”), file managers (see Section 3, “Konqueror File Manager”) and printers (see Section 4, “Printing and Faxing from Applications”). We then explore the world of multimedia by reviewing audio and movie applications (see Section 1, “Audio Applications”, and Section 2, “Movie Applications”), as well as CD burning (see Section 3, “CD Burning”).

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