Project 1.2

Hands-On Project 1.2:  Exploring the Fedora linux Interface

Time Required: 15 minutes

 Objective: Explore the Fedora Linux desktop.

Required Tools and equipment: A Fedora 30 Linux virtual machine or computer.

Description: In this project, you explore the Fedora 30 desktop and view some of the common tools available in Fedora 30. While you can use other versions of Linux, Fedora 30 is suggested for these projects because they are written with that distribution in mind. Note that Fedora 30 comes with the GNOME desktop by default. 

1. Start your Linux computer and log on. 

2. Notice the bar at the top of the desktop. This is the top panel, which contains the Activities menu, a digital clock, and a place to access settings for the network, control the sound volume, and log on and off from the system. Click Activities to access the Favorites side panel and the search box.

3. In the Favorites side panel (see Figure 1-15), you have access to common applications such as a Web browser and a file manager. Applications can be added to this panel; you’ll do this in the next module. Click the Show Applications icon (it looks like a square grid of white dots) at the bottom of the panel to see more tasks and apps.

4. Click Settings to see a list of settings tools. Click details near the bottom of the Settings window to see basic system information (see Figure 1-16). Click each of the options in the left pane to see what can be configured from here. Close the Details window.

5. Click Activities and click the Show Applications icon. Click utilities to see a list of utilities that come with Fedora, including a calculator, disk management utilities, and system monitoring.

6. Click Terminal to open the terminal application, which provides a command-line interface to Linux, much like the command prompt in Windows. In the terminal window, type uname –a to see detailed version information for the Linux OS and the kernel.

7. Type man uname and press enter. The resulting display provides documentation about the uname command. (The man command is used to access the Linux help system.)

8. Press Page up and Page down to page through the manual pages. When you are finished browsing the man pages, press q to exit the manual documentation.

9. Type ls -la and press enter to view information about files in the current folder. The current folder is shown by the information in the brackets before the $ prompt. The default prompt syntax is user@computer folder, where user is the logged-on user, computer is the name of the computer (localhost is the name by default), and folder is the name of the folder the shell is currently in, which is called the working directory in Linux. Your working directory likely is shown as ~, which is shorthand for the user’s home folder.

10. Type cd documents and press enter. Case is important in Linux, so Documents is different from documents; be sure to capitalize the D. You see that your prompt changes, but unlike the Windows command prompt, you don’t see the entire path. To see the entire path of your working directory, type pwd and press enter (pwd stands for “print working directory”).

11. Type cd / (be sure to use a forward slash) and press enter to go to the root of the file system. Type ls and press enter to see a list of folders in the root. Type cd ~ and press enter to get back to your home folder. Close the terminal window.

12. On the far right side of the desktop, click the power icon. A small panel opens. Here you can adjust the sound volume, manage network connections, view information about the current user, log off the system, and shut down or lock the system, among other things. On the lower-right side of the open panel, click the power icon. You are informed that the system will power off in 60 seconds. Click Cancel if you are continuing to the next project.