Where's my...?

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

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 MacOS 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.

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 full-fledged applications available to accomplish many common tasks such as word processing, e-mail handling, web browsing, etc.

MacOS X users may find similarities between MacOS X and GNU/Linux applications, because MacOS 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 MacOS X.

You may also install a large number of applications through the RpmDrake utility (please refer to the Chapter 20, Rpmdrake: Package Management).

Control Panel/System Preferences

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

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 MacOS 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

None of your DOS commands or functions will work in a Linux shell. Take a look at the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manual to discover their equivalence and much, much more. Have fun, you now have a real shell at hand!

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 the section called “File Sharing” for more information.

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 MacOS X, it is slightly different. What is mounted under /mnt with GNU/Linux is mounted under /Volumes in MacOS X but is made available as a “root file system” in the Finder.

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. If you have Konqueror running, the CD-ROM contents will appear in a new window.

[Note]Note

Things are a bit different for audio CDs: upon inserting one in the drive, the KsCD CD player is automatically loaded. Please see the section called “Audio Applications”.

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 drives: floppy, CD-ROM, ZIP, USB keys, etc.

My Documents

Under Mandrakelinux every user has a directory called Documents/ located in their home directory.

The home directory concept is equivalent 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 MacOS X this is very similar. The home directory's equivalent is /Users/user_name and it also contains a directory called Documents.

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 import many popular formats for office applications (see the section called “Word Processor” and the section called “Spreadsheet”).

[Note]Note

We are specifically mentioning office documents because they are important. Due to space constraints we cannot enumerate 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 MacOS X. To get an idea of GNU/Linux equivalents of Windows applications, you can consult the table of equivalents.