Breaking Free

Breaking Free!

You may not need to go through any of these hoops to preserve your old operating system. As you go through this book, you may find that all of your needs are met just running Linux. There are plenty of applications as slick and as capable as anything in the Windows world.

Why go back and forth when you can just go forward? In Appendix B of this book, I cover the installation process of some of the more popular distributions. When you are ready to install Linux for good, take a look there. In the meantime, and until you feel comfortable, you can always try out Linux without installing by using the WFTL Edition Knoppix CD-ROM included with this book.

Resources

CodeWeavers

http://www.codeweavers.com

Debian

http://www.debian.org

DistroWatch (for a great distribution roundup )

http://www.distrowatch.com

Fedora Project

http://fedora.redhat.com

Linux.org

http://www.linux.org

Mandriva/Mandrake

http://www.mandriva.com

Red Hat Software

http://www.redhat.com

Slackware Linux

http://www.slackware.com

SUSE Linux

http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/index/html

VMware

http://www.vmware.com

Win4Lin

http://www.win4lin.com

WINE Project

http://www.winehq.org

Chapter 4. Getting Your Hands Dirty

Welcome to the multiuser, multitasking, multieverything world. Linux is designed to run multiple users and processes concurrently. What that means is that your system is capable of doing many things, even while it appears to be idle. This is the reason so many businesses and organizations use Linux as a Web server, e-mail server, file server, print server . . . well, you get the idea.

From the perspective of the individual user , this means that all users in your family (or office) can have desktop environments that are truly theirs and theirs alone. Your desktop can be configured and modified to let you work the way you want to, with different backgrounds, icons, colors, or themes, depending on your mood. It also protects your personal information from others, meaning that the kids can totally change their desktops and reorganize things but you won't be affected in any way when you log in.

I'll have you logging in very shortly, but for the moment I want to say a few words about your new desktop.

Getting to Know You . . . KDE

Linux is extremely flexible. Linux makes it possible to run in a number of different desktop environments. The plus side of this is that you decide how you want to work. Your system works the way you want it to and not the other way around. The downside is exactly the same. Let's face it, being told what to do is often easier, even if it means getting used to working in a way that you may not particularly like at first—not necessarily better, but easier.

On that note, at some time when you've gotten comfortable with your Linux system running the KDE desktop, I'm going to ask you to be brave and experiment with some of these other environments, whether it be GNOME, WindowMaker, IceWM, or one of the many other desktop environments available to the Linux user . You may find yourself totally taken with a different way of doing things. All your programs will still work as they did, but the feel of your desktop—the experience, if you prefer—will be all yours. For now, we'll stick to KDE.

KDE is the most popular desktop environment in the Linux world, and deservedly so. It is beautiful, slick, mature, powerful, and easy to use. It is also loaded with great applications for e-mail, surfing the Web, playing movies, burning CDs, writing documents, working with spreadsheets, and so on. KDE also features a great collection of games that should keep you busy for some time.

A Few Words about X

In a few seconds, when I start showing you around your desktop, what I am telling you now will fade into the background of your memory, but I still think you should know. KDE, that great-looking desktop system, is the friendly face that rides above your Linux system's real graphical engine. That engine is called the X window system, X.Org, or simply X . What KDE, your desktop environment, does is provide control of windows , borders, decorations, colors, icons, and so on.

Historical Note

You may also hear of this graphical engine referred to as XFree86. In January of 2004, X.Org came into being as the body that develops and builds on the X window system code base for Linux. Prior to the emergence of X.Org, Linux systems used XFree86. Within a few months, however, most of the large Linux distributions had switched to the X.Org code base.

When you installed your system, you went through a graphical desktop configuration step of some kind. What you were setting up at that time wasn't KDE or GNOME, but X. X is what the desktop—and every graphical program you run— really runs on.