Introduction

vii

top level of a menu on a GUI screen or window

When you see a word in this style, it indicates that the word is the top level of a pulldown menu.

If you click on the word on the GUI screen, the rest of the menu should appear. For example:

Under File on a GNOME terminal, you will see the New Tab option that allows you to open

multiple shell prompts in the same window.

If you need to type in a sequence of commands from a GUI menu, they will be shown like the

following example:

Go to Main Menu Button (on the Panel) => Programming => Emacs to start the Emacs text

editor.

button on a GUI screen or window

This style indicates that the text will be found on a clickable button on a GUI screen. For example:

Click on the Back button to return to the webpage you last viewed.

computer output

When you see text in this style, it indicates text displayed by the computer on the command line.

You will see responses to commands you typed in, error messages, and interactive prompts for

your input during scripts or programs shown this way. For example:

Use the

ls

command to display the contents of a directory:

$ ls

Desktop

about.html

logs

paulwesterberg.png

Mail

backupfiles

mail

reports

The output returned in response to the command (in this case, the contents of the directory) is

shown in this style.

prompt

A prompt, which is a computer's way of signifying that it is ready for you to input something,

will be shown in this style. Examples:

$

#

[stephen@maturin stephen]$

leopard login:

user input

Text that the user has to type, either on the command line, or into a text box on a GUI screen, is

displayed in this style. In the following example, text is displayed in this style:

To boot your system into the text based installation program, you will need to type in the text

command at the

boot:

prompt.

Additionally, we use several different strategies to draw your attention to certain pieces of information.

In order of how critical the information is to your system, these items will be marked as note, tip,

important, caution, or a warning. For example:

Note

Remember that Linux is case sensitive. In other words, a rose is not a ROSE is not a rOsE.