2. Exploring the KDE Interface
- Log in under KDE; notice differences on Taskbar (Configurable
clock and Klipper
clipboard utility)
- Right-click within the taskbar and select "Configure Panel".
- Go to the Arrangement tab and experiment with shrinking and
moving the Taskbar
around on the Desktop.
Go to the Menus tab and experiment with changing the settings for the
"K-Menu"
(Start Button). Add the Quickbrowser and/or Print System. Check out
the Name
and Description option.
- Click on "Edit K Menu." This allows you to add and remove
items from the
Cascading K=Menu. {Can you do this in the Gnome interface? _____]
- Open the KDE Control Center
Experiment with Backgrounds and Themes
Go to the Desktop section and enable/disable the Desktop Menu
- Go to the Information Section and check out Device information.
- Go to the KDE Components section and examine the File
Associations options.
See if you can create a file extension type with your own initials that
will open
text files in the KWRITE editor.
Change the Session Manager settings so that you no longer need to
confirm KDE logouts.
Go to the Peripheral settings and change the Mouse defaults from
right-handed to left-handed.
- Go to the Region & Accessibility Settings and examine the
default settings for currency,
time and date, numbers, locale, and other.
- Go to the Keyboard Shortcuts section and create an alternate
shortcut to log out of KDE,
(You can use CTRL+SHIFT+O, or another available combination.)
- Go to the Internet and Network Options. Examine the settings
for File Sharing and
Local Network Browsing. See if you can configure the LISA Daemon to
allow
you to drag files from a VNC desktop over the network to your local
computer.
- See if you can configure your computer to allow basic Samba
client functionality
from a GUI Konqueror window and from a Terminal command line.
See if you can configure your Linux home directory as a read-only
shared folder visible
from a Windows XP client.
- Now, switch over to the Gnome interface and see whether you can
accomplish these tasks.
3. Redhat Basic Configuration Tools
redhat-config-time / redhat-config-date
redhat-config-keyboard
redhat-config-language
redhat-config-mouse
(serial mice let you choose the port, see
Jang p. 374)
redhat-config-soundcard
(You may need to download and use the sndconfig package,
which can
be downloaded from
rpmfind.net)
[redhat-config-xfree86]
[redhat-config-samba]
4. Linux Practical Application Exercises
- Restart services (such as network service or Apache from
command-line.
(See http://linux.boeldt.net/linux_tips.asp) Many services can be restarted by
the
Superuser from the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory.
- Work with Open Office, other GUI applications and command-line
utilities,
(ps2pdf, a2ps) to produce and view Adobe Acrobat-compatible (pdf) files.