When Linux Mint first kicks off, you'll find a helpful Welcome panel in the middle of your screen.



It's worth looking over because it's full of links to useful information and handy features. Perhaps the most useful is Add Multimedia Codecs which will incorporate all the software needed for multimedia support. There's also a link to a 50+ page User Guide to Mint.

The desktop layout's pretty standard, but I'll just draw your attention to a couple of features. In the upper right-hand corner you'll almost certainly find a lighted "i" shield. Hovering over it will reveal a tooltip of what it's all about.



Clicking it will start the automatic update process -- but don't do so yet! There are numerous update servers around the world so you might as well use the fastest one. To do so;

• Click Applications / System Tools / System Settings

• Choose Software Sources

• The Download From selector will almost certainly be set on Main Server. If it is, click the arrow head beside it and choose Other

• A new window will open from which you can select a server in your country, or have the system do it for you by clicking Select Best Server

You'll need to add your root password to authenticate this change.


While you're in the System Settings window, it's worth checking out Additional Drivers too. This will check for any available third-party drivers for your hardware. Linux supports pretty much everything, but some manufacturers produce drivers with a few extra bells and whistles. (NVidia video cards for example are particularly well supported in Linux.)

OK, back on the desktop, click on the "i" shield to add all those updates.



What, another damn password? Yep, security consciousness is one of the main differences between Linux and Windows. Any command that has the potential to damage your system must be approved by the root user. And that includes adding or updating software.


While that's ticking away, take a look at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen where you'll find four little windows.



Click one. Whoa! That update window disappeared. What happened? (Click back on the leftmost one and it'll reappear.)

Those four little boxes represent four separate desktop workspaces and are an incredibly useful feature. You can do different things in different workspaces and rapidly switch between them -- either with the mouse or via keyboard shortcuts: <Ctrl + Alt + Left or Right Arrow keys>.

You can move windows between workspaces by clicking on the little arrow head in the window's top left-hand corner and selecting Move to Another Workspace. You can even tag a window to be visible on all workspaces.




Want to try something scarier? Before you do this, you should know that the way back is to hit <Ctrl + Alt + F7>.

OK, ready? Hit <Ctrl + Alt + F1>. (Or <Ctrl + Alt + F2>, <Ctrl + Alt + F3> or <Ctrl + Alt + F4>. Each of those will take you into a separate text-only termninal where you can login and do stuff from the commandline.

Why would you want to do that? A simple example: imagine a program goes haywire and completely locks up your GUI. There's no need to reboot. You can simply drop into a terminal window, look at what's causing the lockup and either change its resource usage or even kill it off entirely. You can even stop and restart the whole GUI environment if you like!

In fact the terminal (and commandline commands) are highly developed and extremely useful in Linux. We'll look at just how useful next time ...