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X Window System Environment / GNOME

Unix uses the X Windows system to provide a graphical user interface (or GUI). The default CSL-supported desktop is GNOME. GNOME is a powerful, user-friendly, fully-featured desktop environment that is very similar to the interfaces used by Windows or Mac OS. Users who are familiar with these operating systems and GUIs find GNOME very familiar and intuitive.

Once you are logged in, you should see a window in the upper left-hand corner of the screen with something like [bbadger@demo01] (1)$ inside of it. This is called your prompt and means that the computer is waiting for you to type a command. The prompt is in a window called an terminal emulator, specifically GNOME Terminal, which emulates a text-only terminal in a windowing environment. More information will be given about this later. Unlike other windowing environments you may be familiar with, Unix is more command-line oriented. This means that the Terminal is one of the most common ways of communicating with the computer. You'll more than likely have a different hostname than demo01 and a different login than bbadger. This is fine, as this material applies to all CSL Unix machines and all who use them. All the things you see on your screen, as well as all the things you can do to manipulate the image of your screen is called your environment. This environment has been carefully designed to be the easiest to use during your introductory computing classes.



Subsections
next up previous contents
Next: When You First Log Up: Getting Started Previous: Logging In   Contents
Michelle Craft 2008-01-23