Raspberry Pi A, User Manual, Page: 64 / 314

P A R T I
C O N N E C T I N G T H E B O A R D
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Preferences
❍
Customise Look and Feel
—A toolkit for adjusting the appearance of the GUI, includ-
ing the style and colour of windows.
❍
Desktop Session Settings —A tool for changing how the system works when the
user is logged in, including what programs are automatically loaded and which
window manager—the software that draws the borders and title bars of windows—
is used.
❍
Keyboard and Mouse
—A tool for adjusting input devices. If your keyboard is typing
the wrong characters for certain keys, or your mouse is too sensitive, the settings can
be altered here.
❍
Monitor Settings
—The resolution that the monitor or TV connected to the Pi runs at
can be altered here, although advanced changes require modification of configuration
files. You’ll learn about this in Chapter 7, “Advanced Raspberry Pi Configuration”.
❍
Openbox Configuration Manager
—The LXDE GUI uses a desktop environment
called Openbox , which can be adjusted here. Using this tool, you can apply new themes
to change the GUI’s appearance, or alter how certain aspects of the interface operate.
❍
Preferred Applications
—A tool for changing which applications are opened for par-
ticular file types. If you choose to use an alternative web browser, the system default
can be changed here.
Finding Help
Linux is designed to be as user-friendly as possible to new users, even at the terminal com-
mand prompt. Although you’ll learn the most common ways to use each command in this
chapter, not every option will be covered—to do so would require a much larger book.
If you find yourself stuck, or if you want to learn more about any of the tools that are dis-
cussed in the following pages, there’s a command you should learn:
man
.
Each Linux application comes with a help file known as a man page —short for “manual
page”. It provides background on the software as well as details on what its options do and
how to use them.
To access the man page for a given tool, just type
man
followed by the command name. To
see the man page for
ls
, a tool for listing the contents of directories, just type
man ls
.