First steps in Mint
You’re all set up and ready to start taking advantage of everything your new operating system has to offer. Without further ado, then…
One advantage of the Linux live DVD is that you’ve already experienced the desktop environment by the time you come to install Mint. As we’ve seen, Mint’s Cinnamon desktop should feel particularly familiar because it shares many common elements with the Windows environment, most notably the desktop with its shortcuts as well as the taskbar (Mint refers to this as the ‘panel’) with its menu button and system notification area.
Let’s take a quick tour of Mint’s handy menu button, which places the entire system at your disposal. Click it to reveal a two-paned menu with a series of buttons on the left (Favourites) and a two-level list of shortcuts on the right. Roll your mouse over each button in the Favourites and a title and brief description will appear at the bottom-right of the menu, revealing handy shortcuts to Firefox, SoftwareManager, System Settings, Terminal and Files, plus buttons for locking, logging out and power. They all do what you’d expect them to.
Mint comes with all the core tools you need, and the menu is the best place to find them. Type the first few letters of the program you’re looking for into the search box at the top to jump to it – that’ll be incredibly handy later, but right now you’re not aware of what these programs are called. Thankfully, they’re organised into logical sub-menus such as Accessories, Graphics and Office. You’ll also see sections entitled Administration – go here for system tools, Preferences – shortcuts to specific system settings, and Places – and key user folders such as Documents.
Clicking an item opens it, but right-click and you’ll discover options for pinning more accessible shortcuts elsewhere: on the desktop, the panel and in the menu’s Favourites. You can also add items to Favourites by clicking and dragging them into place from the righthand pane, giving you control over where it appears in the list. You can also click and drag existing items the rearrange them too. The final option offered when you right-click enables you to uninstall the selected item.
Customise the panel
Unlike the Windows taskbar, Mint’s panel is infinitely customisable. It consists of ‘applets’, of which the menu button is one, as are the system notification icons on the right. In fact, each icon is an individual applet, enabling you to pick and choose exactly what gets displayed here. To see what other applets are available, right-click the panel and choose ‘Add applets to the panel’ to view a list.
Each applet is given an icon and description – to add it to the panel, select the applet and click the + button at the bottom of the Applets window to add it immediately. Remove existing applets – clearly marked with a tick button – by selecting them and clicking the ‘-’ button. Some applets have a settings button next to them, which makes it possible to configure the applet itself; the Calendar is one such example.
Other applets are available from the internet – switch to the Download tab and click Yes to refresh the cache if
prompted. Simply click the button to download and install an applet, at which point it becomes available in the Manage list. These applets can also be uninstalled if you don’t like them. Note that applets with a padlock are system tools and off-limits.
If you’d like to rearrange the order of applets in the panel, right-click it and flick the ‘Panel edit mode’ switch to the on position. Then simply click and drag an item to its new position. Don’t forget to flick the switch off again when you’re done.
Mint supports multiple panels – up to four, each of which is attached to a different edge on the desktop. You can also move your panel to the top or side of the screen – right-click the panel, expand the Modify panel section and choose Move panel to select which edge you want to move it to.
Browsing files and folders
Mint’s equivalent of FileExplorer is the Files app, accessible from the panel via its own shortcut or by double-clicking any folder or drive shortcuts on the desktop. Again, the layout will be vaguely familiar to Windows users and largely self-explanatory, with a shortcut panel on the left offering common shortcuts. Drag folders from the right-hand panel into the Bookmarks section to pin them for easy access.
Mastering Linux’s file system is a separate topic, but the key concept is that each user has their own Home folder, which the Files tool will always default to. In here you’ll find familiar folders for housing pictures, documents, downloads and so on. Of course, your data is likely to be residing on your Windows partition, but
Files can handle NTFS and FAT32-formatted partitions easily. Look for your main hard drive under Devices, and you should find your personal files and folders under
Users\<Username>. You’ll have full read/write access privilages, so be careful.
Start tweaking
Let’s start giving Mint a more personal look. Right-click the desktop and choose Change Desktop Background. Select Tara from the left-hand menu to change it to a striking picture, or select Pictures to browse your Pictures folder. In all likelihood this is empty, so click + and choose Other Locations to browse your Windows partition for suitable images if required. Switch to the Settings tab to have a slideshow form your backdrop instead of a single image.
Customise which icons appear on the desktop by right-clicking the desktop again and choosing Desktop Settings. Options exist for Computer, Home, mounted volumes (all on by default – the latter you may wish to switch off to reduce desktop clutter), plus rubbish bin and network (both disabled by default).
To change the appearance of windows, mouse pointers and the panel, right-click the panel and choose Themes. You can modify individual aspects or Click Add/Remove to browse for integrated themes online. You can also change the font used via System Settings> Appearance>Fonts.
Remember Windows’ support for floating desktop gadgets? Mint brings that back – right-click the desktop and choose Add Desklets. Three are available from the get-go: a floating clock, digital photo frame and launcher desklet for opening programs, but again you can get more via the Download tab.
A complete setup
Open System Settings and scroll down to the Hardware section to make sure your hardware is configured properly. Use the Display applet to configure your screen resolution or configure multi-monitor support, for example. Select Keyboard to familiarise yourself with shortcuts. Use Network to set up your network if necessary – if you’re on Wi-Fi, your adaptor should have been detected during setup; if not, you can set it up and get connected here. You can also verify your printer has been set up (Mint is smart enough to detect networked printers as well as locally connected ones).
If you plan to share your PC with others, create additional user accounts via the Users and Groups applets under System Settings > Administration. Like Windows you can create Standard or Administrator user accounts; the former is best for those who shouldn’t be allowed to access system settings or install their own apps, such as children – or your better half.
Let’s get Terminal
Not everything in Linux can be done through the pointand-click desktop, which is where the Terminal comes in. Don’t be scared by the thought of accessing the command line – over time you’ll discover many tasks are often quicker and more efficiently performed through the Terminal. There’s a brilliant guide at
https://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial and we’ve also run tutorials in these very pages – subscribers can visit www.linuxformat.com/archives and search for Terminal to access them as a series of PDFs.
“Remember Windows’ support for floating desktop gadgets? Mint brings that back – right-click the desktop and choose Add Desklets”