The Perfect Desktop - gOS Rocket G 2.0 (GNOME) - Page 2

3 Update The System

When you log in for the first time, you will most likely see a green software update icon in the upper right corner (there should also be a pop-up originating from that icon saying that software updates are available) which means that updates for the installed software are available. To install the updates, click on that green icon:

The Update Manager tells you which updates are available. Click on Install Updates to install them:

Type in your password:

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

When the update is complete, click on Close:

Then close the Update Manager:

The green software update icon is now gone. The system is up-to-date.

4 Adding A Second Panel At The Bottom Of The Desktop

You might have noticed that the gOS GNOME comes with only one panel at the top (whereas other GNOME dekstops comes with two panels, one at the top and one at the bottom of the desktop). The problem with having just one panel is that if you minimize a window, it disappears completely, and you can't work with it anymore. To fix this, we add a second panel at the bottom which holds a list of our open windows, so that we can bring up a window from the bottom panel again after we've minimized it.

Right-click on an empty area in the top panel; from the menu that comes up, select New Panel:

A new panel should appear at the bottom of the desktop. Right-click on it and select Add to Panel... from the menu that comes up:

The Add to Panel window opens. Go to the Desktop & Windows section and select Window List:

From now on all your open windows should be listed on the bottom panel.

5 Flash Player

gOS Rocket G 2.0 installs the Macromedia Flash Player by default. To see if the Flash plugin is working, start Firefox. Then type about:plugins in the address bar. Firefox will then list all installed plugins, and it should list the Flash Player (version 9.0r124 which is the newest one at the time of this writing) among them:

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
[x] F-Spot
[ ] Picasa

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

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

Sound & Video:
[ ] Amarok
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[ ] MPlayer
[x] 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
[ ] 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 gOS Rocket G 2.0.