So I installed Fedora Linux...

[Peegee]

And now I don't know what to do.

- Gnome GUI is installed. If I *should*, I can install KDE
- I can't find where the darn shell prompt links are :p
- Dual monitor (ie: 2880x1080) support -- anybody know how?
- mounting my other two slave drives -- how do I go about doing this?

I checked out some of the fedora linux forums but this is coming along slowly. If I can get some quick and dirty fixes, yay.

ps: my linux is so rusty. /crying or very sad

Thanks in advance

[Odaisé Gaelach]

And now I don't know what to do.

Ohhh boy... I know the feeling. What version if Fedora are you using?

Right, with regards to the GUI... I've not used Linux very much. However, if you're migrating from Windows to Linux, you'll probably find the KDE GUI much more familiar than the Gnome. The Gnome GUI (I feel) is more similar to Macintosh. Personally, I was more comfortable with KDE than Gnome - though having everything named with a K irritated me... Konquerer, Konsole, KWrite...

[Shoeberto]

You can right-click on the Panel and add a shortcut to gnome-terminal, if you can't find it under the Gnome menu (it's under Accessories in Ubuntu)

I think you can install most common packages pretty easily in Fedora using the yum system.

If you have an nVidia card, dual monitor support is in the driver setting program (nvidia-settings) after you install them. You might be SOL with an ATI card, 'cause their Linux support is currently e. There's supposed to be an improved re-write coming up, but don't expect that until 2008.

If you want the drives to mount at every boot, this should tell you what you need. Once you've added your other partitions to it, running

mount -a

as root will mount all the filesystems you just defined in fstab.

Alternatively if you just want to mount them for the single session, you can follow this guide:
How to mount partitions and filesystems in Linux

[o_O]

Here's what I'd do to mount stuff:
First open a console and run

$ fdisk -l

You'll get a bunch of tables with device (partition) names like /dev/sda1, /dev/hdb1, etc. Have a look at the filesystem and size of each one to determine which ones are partitions you want to mount. You need to make sure that mount points for each partition you want to mount exist, so run

$ mkdir /mnt/{slave1,slave2}

substituting slave1,slave2 for directory names pertinent to the actual partitions.
You need to be root to mount, so run

$ su -
$ mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/slave1

substituting /dev/sda1 and /mnt/slave1 for appropriate device and directory names, and you're set.

As for where to find the console in Gnome, it's in one of the top panel menus. In Breezy Badger it was under System > Administration, but I think it moved to the Applications menu in later Gnome releases.

nVidia's Twinview is very good for dual monitors. I had Compiz set up on dual monitors and rotating the desktop cube looked pretty cool, it was one big 'cube' across two displays. ATI has had Xinerama support since 8.19.10, but ATI's drivers and the reverse engineered open source ones have always been a little dodgy by all accounts.

When it comes to desktop environments, it pays to learn the various terms:

• Window manager: controls how windows behave, things like grabbing focus, minimization/maximization, inter-desktop movement, etc.
• Window decorator: controls the appearance of the borders, titlebars and buttons of the window.
• Toolkit: Controls the "look and feel" of the display environment. Provides a framework for the things like messageboxes and window buttons/menus. You'll probably only have to deal with Qt (which KDE uses) and GTK (which Gnome uses) right now, but there exist a few others, like E17's. This is the main differentiation between the appearances of different environments.
• Desktop environment: The whole package. Comes with everything needed to display stuff, and usually a whole lot more that you don't need.

I hate desktop environments because of all the bloat they come with, but I couldn't run Compiz-Fusion with any other window manager so I went for the lightest DE - Xfce, which is quite nice. At the moment I'm using E17, which is nice. I Love Fluxbox, but that's geared towards a more experienced user so you might not want to tackle that just yet.
Here are some screenshots:
<a href="http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Enlightenment/Screenshots/DR17_Screenshots/_images/e17-28.jpg">E17</a>
<a href="http://www.osnews.com/img/1347/myKDE3.jpg">KDE</a>
<a href="http://commandline.org.uk/images/posts/gnome/gnome-screenshot-large.png">Gnome</a>
<a href="http://img.osnews.com/img/4091/xfce4.png">Xfce4</a>
<a href="http://www.srijith.net/trinetre/archives/upload/screenshot-fluxbox.png">Fluxbox</a>

[Baloki]

I think we have a duel-monitor set-up running under KDE on Gentoo here but I'd have to ask Miles how he got it working and if it needs Beryl or not...

[o_O]

It shouldn't need Beryl, since that's just the window manager. Getting dual-headed displays is a matter of getting X to work with whatever setup you have.