Operation Manual
• IDLE—An integrated development environment (IDE) written specifically for Python. You’ll learn more about using IDLE
to write your own Python programs in Chapter 11, “An Introduction to Python”.
• IDLE 3—Clicking this entry loads IDLE configured to use the newer Python 3 programming language, rather than the
default Python 2.7 language. Both are largely compatible with each other, but some programs may require features of Python
3.
• Scratch—This shortcut opens the Scratch educational language, and is the same as the Scratch entry found in the Education
category. Either can be used to start the program.
• Squeak—As with Scratch, this is a duplicate of the shortcut found in the Education category. You will rarely want to click
this directly, and should instead use the Scratch shortcut.
Sound & Video
• Music Player—LXMusic is a simple and lightweight interface to the XMMS2 music playback software, allowing you to
listen to music files while you work on the Pi.
System Tools
• Task Manager—A tool for checking the amount of free memory available on the Pi, the current workload of the processor,
and for closing programs which have crashed or are otherwise unresponsive.
Preferences
• Customise Look and Feel—A toolkit for adjusting the appearance of the GUI, including 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 6, “Configuring the Raspberry Pi”.
• Openbox Configuration Manager—The LXDE GUI uses a desktop environment called Openbox, which can be adjusted
here. Using thist 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 particular 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 command 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 discussed 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.
Using External Storage Devices
The Pi’s SD card, which stores all the various Pi files and directories, isn’t very big. The largest available SD card at the time of
writing is 64 GB, which is tiny compared to the 3,000 GB (3 TB) available from the largest full-size desktop hard drives.
If you’re using your Pi to play back video files (see Chapter 7, “The Pi as a Home Theatre PC”) you’ll likely need more storage
than you can get from an SD card. As you learned in Chapter 1, “Meet the Raspberry Pi”, it’s possible to connect USB Mass
Storage (UMS) devices to the Pi in order to gain access to more storage space.