Translations by alteeno

Welcome to the <emphasis>Ubuntu Desktop Guide</emphasis>, a comprehensive guide to using Ubuntu in a desktop environment.

The guide is divided into the following chapters:

<emphasis role="bold">Getting Started</emphasis> - An introduction to the world of Ubuntu and some basic concepts which are useful when getting started.

<emphasis role="bold">Configuring Your System</emphasis> - Change the settings of your Ubuntu system according to your needs.

<emphasis role="bold">Getting More Help</emphasis> - Where to find help if this guide doesn't provide the answer.

You can buy this guide in book form from <ulink url="http://www.lulu.com/ubuntu-doc">our Lulu store</ulink>. You will only pay for the price of printing and postage.

A note presents interesting, sometimes technical, pieces of information related to the surrounding discussion.

The root user in GNU/Linux is the user which has administrative access to your system. Normal users do not have this access for security reasons. However, Ubuntu does not include the root user. Instead, administrative access is given to individual users, who may use the "sudo" application to perform administrative tasks. The first user account you created on your system during installation will, by default, have access to sudo. You can restrict and enable sudo access to users with the <application>Users and Groups</application> application (see <xref linkend="users-and-groups"/> for more information).

Sudo will remember your password for a set amount of time. This feature was designed to allow users to perform multiple administrative tasks without being asked for a password each time.

Be careful when doing administrative tasks, you might damage your system!

For more information on the <application>sudo</application> program and the absence of a root user in Ubuntu, read the <ulink url="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo">sudo page</ulink> on the Ubuntu wiki.

Working at the command line is not as daunting a task as you would think. There is no special knowledge needed to know how to use the command line, it is a program like everything else. Most things in Linux can be done using the command line, although there are graphical tools for most programs, sometimes they are just not enough. This is where the command line comes in handy.

The terminal is often called the command prompt or the shell. In days gone by, this was the way the user interacted with the computer, however Linux users have found that the use of the shell can be quicker than a graphical method and still holds some merit today. Here you will learn how to use the terminal.

The original use of the terminal was a file browser and indeed it is still used as a file browser, in the event of the graphical environment failing. You can use the terminal as a file browser to navigate your files and undo the changes that have been made.

To start <application>Scribus</application>, choose <menuchoice><guimenu>Applications</guimenu><guimenuitem>Office</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Scribus</guimenuitem></menuchoice> .

More information is available from the <ulink url="http://www.gimp.org/">GIMP homepage.</ulink>

Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor

<application>Inkscape</application> is a powerful editor for working with the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format.

Install the <application>inkscape</application> package (see <xref linkend="add-applications"/>).

To start <application>Inkscape</application> choose <menuchoice><guimenu>Applications</guimenu><guimenuitem>Graphics</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Inkscape SVG Vector Illustrator</guimenuitem></menuchoice> .