Introduction

One of the goals of GNOME is to make your system easy to use, without requiring you to learn the technical details about your operating system. However, there are some basic UNIX notions that you have to be familiar with even while using the easy graphical interface provided by GNOME. For the convenience of new users, these basics are collected in this document. If you need further information on UNIX, you should read the documentation which came with your system; there are also a number of books and on-line guides available for all versions of UNIX.

The following guide applies to all versions of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, including both the commercial Unices such as Solaris and open-source operating systems such as FreeBSD and Linux. Some of the material here is based on Linux Installation and Getting Started guide, by Matt Welsh, Phil Hughes, David Bandel, Boris Beletsky, Sean Dreilinger, Robert Kiesling, Evan Leibovitch, and Henry Pierce. The guide is available for download or online viewing from the Linux Documentation Project or from the Open Source Writers Group.