The Perfect Desktop - Linux Mint 16 (Petra) - Page 2

Your new Linux Mint system starts. Log in to the desktop with the username and password you provided during installation:

When you log in for the first time, you will see the following help window. Click on Close:

This is how your new desktop looks:

Now the base system is ready to be used.

3 Update The System

When you log in for the first time, you will most likely see anotification icon in the upper right corner which means that updates for the installed software are available:

To install updates, either click on that icon or open the menu and go to Other > Update Manager button:

Type in your password:

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

They are now being downloaded and installed:

If you should encounter following notice during an update, it likely is a good idea to replace the old file:

When the update is complete, the Update Manager window will close. The icon in the upper right corner should now look like this which indicates that the system is up-to-date:

4 Flash Player And Java

Linux Mint 12 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 11.0 r1) among them:

You should also find the Java plugin in the list which means Java is installed as well:

5 Inventory Of What We Have So Far

Now let's browse all menus 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
[ ] Shotwell Photo Manager
[ ] Picasa

Internet:
[x] Firefox
[ ] Opera
[ ] Chromium
[x] Flash Player
[ ] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird
[ ] Evolution
[ ] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[ ] Vuze
[x] Pidgin
[ ] Skype
[ ] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC
[ ] Gwibber Social Client

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

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

Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Bluefish
[ ] Eclipse

Other:
[ ] VirtualBox
[ ] 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 Linux Mint 12.