- Booting Fedora
- Welcome to Fedora Core!
- Configuring Your Printer and Internet Service
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Welcome to Fedora Core!
When your Fedora computer system starts for the first time, Fedora automatically displays the Welcome to Fedora Core! screen. Beginning at this screen, you are led through a few remaining configuration steps that the Fedora installer did not handle. The next section walks you through this process.
Finishing First-Run Configuration
At the Welcome to Fedora Core! screen, click the Next button to proceed to the Date and Time screen, shown in Figure 3.3. Use this screen to be sure that your current date and time are correctly set.
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Figure
3.3 The Date and Time screen allows you to set your current date and time.
You can choose a month and year using the navigation arrows; after the correct month and year appear, you can choose a day simply by clicking its number. If you need to adjust the current time (shown in 24-hour format), enter the correct values into the Hour, Minute, and Second entry boxes. Alternatively, if your computer is connected to the Internet, you can choose to automatically set your time using network time servers by checking the Enable Network Time Protocol check box and selecting a server at random (it does not matter which server you use) from the time server drop-down list.
Once you set your date and time correctly or choose to let the network set your date and time for you, click the Next button to proceed to the User Account screen, shown in Figure 3.4. Use this screen to create a user account with regular privileges on the system. It is this account that you will use on a day-to-day basis. Enter all of the following information:
A username (account name) in the Username box
Your real name in the Full Name box
Your desired password in the Password box
Your desired password a second time in the Confirm Password box
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Figure
3.4 The User Account screen allows you to create the first "regular
user" account on your Fedora system.
When you are done entering account information, click on the Next button to create this account and proceed to the Red Hat Network screen, shown in Figure 3.5.
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Figure
3.5 The Red Hat Network screen allows you to sign up for Red Hat's
software updates service.
At the Red Hat Network screen, you have an opportunity to choose to register with Red Hat's update service. Because this service is an optional premium feature, we don't discuss it in this book. If you want to sign up for the feature or learn more about it later, visit http://rhn.redhat.com for details. For now, select the No option as shown in Figure 3.5 and click the Next button to proceed to the Additional CDs screen shown in Figure 3.6.
Because you will learn how to install additional software from Fedora CD-ROMs any time you like in Hour 21, "Installing Software," we don't spend extra time now installing additional software. Click the Next button to proceed to the Finish Setup screen that confirms that your preliminary configuration of Fedora is complete.
Click Next one more time to display the Linux login prompt.
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Figure
3.6 At the Additional CDs screen, Fedora gives you the option of installing
more software from your CD-ROMs.
Logging In for Configuration
After you finish the first-boot configuration discussed in the previous section, you find yourself looking at the login prompt shown in Figure 3.7. This screen appears every time you start Fedora.
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Figure
3.7 Every time you start Fedora from now on, you see the Linux login prompt.
Identifying the Parts of the Login Screen
The login prompt is primarily designed to enable you to log in to the Fedora desktop to use your computer. Before you log in for the first time, however, you need to become familiar with a few functional areas of the login screen.
For Users Who Didn't Install the X Window System
If in Hour 2 you chose to perform a server installation or chose to customize your software selection and subsequently did not install the X Window System graphical environment, you will not see a graphical login prompt. Instead, you will see a text login prompt. Proceed to Hour 4, "Navigating Linux at the Console," for details on logging in and using Linux in text mode.
If you chose to install more than one language when you installed Linux, clicking the Language button displays a list of languages from which you can select, as shown in Figure 3.8. The language you select is the language used by Fedora for communicating with you in the desktop environment. The default language is English.
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Figure
3.8 Clicking the Language button enables you to select the language Fedora
will use when interfacing with you.
If you chose the Desktop or Workstation install or chose to install the KDE or GNOME environments at the software customization screen as you were installing Linux, clicking the Session button at the login screen enables you to select the environment you want to use, as shown in Figure 3.9.
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Figure
3.9 Clicking the Session button enables you to select the type of desktop
environment you want to use.
The GNOME and KDE options instruct Fedora to log you in to the GNOME and KDE desktops, respectively. The Failsafe option instructs Fedora to log you in to a very basic X Window System desktop in an environment called TWM. The first option, Default System Session, instructs Fedora to log you in to whichever desktop environment is currently set as your default desktop environment. Because you have just installed Fedora, the default environment is GNOME. You can learn more about logging in to KDE and GNOME specifically in Hour 10, "Introducing the Fedora Desktop."
You use the Reboot and Shutdown buttons near the bottom of the screen to restart Fedora or shut the computer down, respectively. Both buttons present a confirmation dialog when they are clicked. The confirmation dialog for the Shutdown button appears in Figure 3.10.
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Figure
3.10 After you click the Shutdown button, a confirmation dialog appears.
To shut down the system, click Shutdown.
Always Shut Down Before Powering Off
Before you turn off your Linux computer, you should always remember to return to the Login screen, click the Shutdown button, and choose Shutdown to shut the system down. Although it isn't likely, it is possible that not shutting down correctly could cause you to lose some of your data.