A Note About Environments

Your Red Hat Linux system is more than the graphical user interface, but it's a fairly safe bet that most new and intermediate users will choose to work within the graphical environment, so we'll spend most of the time demonstrating the techniques behind accomplishing tasks in two popular environments: GNOME and KDE.

Figure 2. A KDE Desktop

Much of what you can accomplish from a graphical environment can also be performed from the shell prompt. In fact, many actions you can perform from the shell prompt are faster than from the graphical environment.

In addition to the chapters covering tasks you can perform in KDE and GNOME, you'll find plenty of useful information within covering basic information from the shell prompt (as shown in Figure 3).

Figure 3. Using Pico at a Shell Prompt

You'll also find useful tips, caution notices and related information inside.

And speaking of caution…