Finding your way through Fedora 17 (Gallery)

Fedora 17, like any modern Linux, is simple to set up.

Fedora, requires you to be set up an ordinary user account. It’s a small, but nice, security feature that’s long been in Linux. 

The login screen, which uses users’ full names instead of their login names, is otherwise straight-forward

Fedora 17’s initial screen is utterly empty. Like Windows 8 Metro or Ubuntu Unity, this is not a Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers (WIMP) interface.

To get to your applications, you need to click on the Activities button in the right-hand corner. From there, you get a choice of “Windows,” which shows you currently running applications and “Applications,” which shows all the applications on the system. The left-hand bar contains your favorite application list. 

You can either search for an application, or as here, look at all the applications from one area. In this case, these are the network applications that are installed by default. 

To open an application from the favorites bar, you can either double click on it or choose to open it in a new window. 

Once you have applications open, you can move between them using the Windows screen. 

GNOME 3.41 doesn’t give you a lot of control over how the desktop works, but it does give you some useful options