Going envrionmental on your posterior

And no, I don't mean that I want you to go green...  I want you to go all orange, red and purple (the default colours employed in Ubuntu).

Once you've installed Ubuntu and booted up (or indeed you're just trying it on a disc/memory stick - go on, just give it a go!) you'll enter a slick, mostly intuitive and professional-looking environment.  If you're a Windows user, you'll find it fairly simple to start navigating - if you're a Mac user, my guess is that you'll find it easier (and there's a reason for that that I'll talk about in another entry).

But you're not looking at Ubuntu, for that matter when you fired up your Windows or Mac machine you're not looking at those operating systems either.  I've warned you before, I'm a geek that took a degree in Electronic Engineering - and that involved a fair bit of coding in near, if not completely, obsolete programming languages (PASCAL, FORTRAN, assembly code and C+ - and I mean 'C+' as it was new at the time... and as I graduated, C++ was just about to be launched - and if I'm right, C++14 is just about to come out...  If you know coding, then that should imply that you can work out my age).

Danger! Education Inbound!  When you load your operating system and you can move your mouse and click on things, that's not the operating system.  That is something called the Graphical User Interface or GUI.  In essence, it's nothing more than an application - 'app' if your used to smartphones - that translates what you are doing with the mouse and keyboard, talks to the operating system that's buried beneath and then tells the screen what to do.  Ubuntu attempt to make this clearer to the user and community, as they don't call it 'Ubuntu' they call it Unity.  Why...?  Because the community not only influences the way Ubuntu works, they can recode each element of the operating system.  So if they want to talk about enhancements to the file manager, they can talk about that...  It's called Gnome...  But if the want to influence the GUI they talk about Unity.

The Unity GUI differs from both Windows and Mac, but not so far as you'll never be able to work it out without having read loads of manuals.  But there are a couple things about the GUI that appear a little strange and not instantly obvious.

Danger! Education Inbound!  Let me take you around some of the areas that confused me at first, and remember that I was predominately a Windows user:

• Launching an application - Are you used to clicking on the 'Start' icon...?  It's not there.  Instead the 'Launcher' is down the left-hand side of the screen, as a series of stacked icons (you can see it in the first image of this entry).  You just place your mouse pointer over the Launcher move your mouse up and down to scroll through them and click on the one you want.

• Closing, maximising and minimising applications.  This makes Windows users look a little foolish for a couple of minutes - as none of the features are found in the upper-right of your application window.  They are in the upper-left (time for Mac users to feel smug - but as I said, I'll come back to why later).  But when you maximise the application, they appear to have disappeared (along with the menu titles like File, Edit and View).  In fact they've simply been 'auto-hidden'.  Simply move your mouse to the top of the screen and they'll appear - I guess they thought that they'd only show them when you're using them.

• Finding running applications.  Windows users, are used to seeing them along the bottom of the screen.  In Ubuntu however, you move to the Launcher - and the more arrow heads there are next to an application, the more running applications of that type there are running.  Click on the application and you're presented with thumbnails of the open applications of that type.  Do note that pressing the keys [Alt]+ [Tab] works the same way as Windows...  But there's something better...  Press what Ubuntu refers to as the 'Super Key' - we all know of it as the Windows Key - and [W] and you get thumbnails of all the applications you're running.  But it get's even better, but we'll talk about that another time!

• Shutting Down.  Again, no 'Start' button.  So look in the diagonally opposite corner.  There you'll find an icon that looks like a gear wheel.  Take a closer look and you see that it sort of looks like a power button.  There you'll find all of the options you would expect to shut down the machine, or indeed change users.

I could rave on for ages about the differences that I've found in Unity compared to Windows, but that's not the point of this post.  I just wanted new users to know how to find the options they need for their first encounter.  I will do a another entry about Unity shortcuts - and trust me it will change the way you use your computer.  But I think that my next post will be about downloading and running applications.  Suffice to say, you will not need to bring you wallet with you for that one.