Getting Started

Question 1.1   How do I get started?

When you log on, you will be using the gnome display manager. You can easily switch to KDE before logging in by clicking Session at the top of the login box and selecting KDE. Either KDE or GNOME is easy to customize. I prefer KDE, Kevin seems to prefer GNOME.

For the operating system itself, there are icons at the side of the screen which point to documentation on the web. We also have the RedHat Linux FAQ and the RedHat Linux Getting Started Guide

On the Linux network there is a great variety of software. For mathematical computations, we have the standard software, Maple, Mathematica, Matlab (in alphabetical order).

There is also a great deal of documentation. For text and program editing, exam, paper, thesis writing, my biased recommendations are simple:

1. [TeX] for formatting almost all printed material. This includes exams, papers, letters, web pages, etc. The AmS-L^ATEXdialect is preferred.
2. [Emacs] for editing files, and everything else that requires editing files, including e-mail.

The file systems are networked, so turning the machine power off or pushing the power button can damage your files.

Never, EVER turn the machine off.

In cases of emergency, holding down the Control and Alt keys, and pressing the backspace key will clean things up and log you out. If it does not, call for help.

The rest of this document will be point you to documentation for Emacs and TeX, to create the documents you need, to the documentation for the printers.