The Login Screen

When Mandrake Linux has finished loading, you will see a screen with a small window in the middle, like the one shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. The Login Window

The Login Window

This is called the “login” screen, because it is used to log into the system. To be able to log in, you need to know the user name and password which were assigned to you when your user account was created. If you installed the system on your own, you obviously have this information.

Inside the window, besides two Reboot and Halt buttons which respectively allow you to reboot or shut down the machine, you can see a list of names and icons representing the existing user accounts on the system.

Note

By default, user root is not shown in this list. So, if you need to login as root from here, you will have to properly adjust the user hiding options in the Login Manager section of the KDE Control Center (see Chapter 5, Using KDE).

To log in, start by clicking on the icon representing your user account, and the contents of the window will change to show you a Password field, a Session type pull-down menu (we will describe its use later), and two buttons. If, by chance, you clicked on the wrong user, you can go back to the user list window by pressing the Back button. Now enter your account password in the Password field.

Warning

You will notice that the characters do not appear while you type them in the Password field. They are replaced by asterisks (*), in order to prevent anyone who might be near you from seeing your secret password. This is common computer behavior whenever you enter a password. Because of this, make sure you press the correct keys, since you cannot check them visually. And remember: passwords under GNU/Linux are case sensitive, which means that if your password is SecretWord and you type secretword instead, using lower case letters, access will be denied!

Finally, press Enter or click on the Login button, and Mandrake Linux will start preparing your working environment. Congratulations, you have just started your first GNU/Linux session!