Chapter 6. Navigating your desktop
Now it’s time to start exploring your desktop! We discussed a few desktop environments in the previous chapter, and today we’re going to focus on using your Linux desktop for basic tasks. I’m going to use Unity, Ubuntu’s default desktop environment, for many of the examples, but I’ll also show you how things work with some other desktops. Also, most of what we discuss here should seem pretty familiar to you, as a regular computer user. What I’m going to do is take basic, everyday things you do in your current operating system and show you how to do them with Linux.
In this section I’m going to show you how to find, launch, and close programs on your Ubuntu system. I think most readers will find this process familiar. It’s not that different from using other operating systems, but it’s different enough to merit a walkthrough. This way, we’re all on the same page.
We’ve talked about this a bit already, but to find programs in Unity, you use the navigation dock on the left (or Windows/Super key) and type the name of the program you wish to launch into Dash, Unity’s launcher (see figure 6.1).
