3 Update The System

When you log in for the first time, you will most likely see an open lock icon in the lower right corner which means that updates for the installed software are available. To install the updates, go to Applications > Administration > mintUpdate:

mintUpdate tells you which updates are available. Click on Install Updates to install them:

The updates are being downloaded and installed (this can take a few minutes):

When the update is complete, click on Close:

In the mintUpdate window, the list of packages to update should now be empty (if it is not, click on Install Updates again). If this is the case, click on Close to leave mintUpdate:

The lock icon should now be closed. The system is up-to-date:

4 Flash Player

Linux Mint 4.0 installs the Macromedia Flash Player by default. To see if the Flash plugin is working, start Firefox (Applications > Internet > Firefox Web Browser). Then type about:plugins in the address bar. Firefox will then list all installed plugins, and it should list the Flash Player (version 9.0r48 which is the newest one at the time of this writing) among them:

You can now open a web site of which you know that it uses Flash. For example, www.spiegel.de has video news in Flash. You should be able to see (and hear) the Flash movies:

Another web site that uses Flash movies is YouTube, for example.

5 NVIDIA/ATI Drivers

If you have an NVIDIA or ATI graphics card and want to use 3D acceleration (e.g. for Compiz-Fusion), you must install the proprietary NVIDIA or ATI driver. There are two ways of doing this: you can either use Envy (Applications > System Tools > Envy) to install the correct driver for you...

... or you use the Restricted Drivers Manager (Applications > Administration > Restricted Drivers Manager):

6 Inventory Of What We Have So Far

Now let's browse all menus under Applications to see which of our needed applications are already installed:

You should find the following situation ([x] marks an application that is already installed, where [ ] is an application that is missing):

Graphics:
[x] The GIMP
[ ] F-Spot
[ ] Picasa

Internet:
[x] Firefox
[ ] Opera
[x] Flash Player
[ ] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird
[ ] Evolution
[ ] aMule
[ ] BitTornado
[ ] Azureus
[x] Pidgin
[ ] Skype
[ ] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC

Office:
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[ ] Adobe Reader
[ ] GnuCash
[ ] Scribus

Sound & Video:
[x] Amarok
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[x] MPlayer
[ ] Rhythmbox Music Player
[ ] gtkPod
[ ] XMMS
[ ] dvd::rip
[ ] Kino
[x] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[ ] VLC Media Player
[ ] Helix Player
[x] Totem
[ ] Xine
[ ] GnomeBaker
[ ] K3B
[ ] Multimedia-Codecs

Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Bluefish
[ ] Quanta Plus

Other:
[ ] VMware Server
[ ] TrueType fonts
[x] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions

So some applications are already on the system. NTFS read-/write support is enabled by default on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and all derived distributions.