Take the desktop tour
Familiarise yourself with Ubuntu 25.04 and discover how to regain control over the boot menu.
A fter logging into Ubuntu proper for the first time, you’re greeted by a desktop both alien and familiar. A Linux distro’s desktop is one of the key ways that it marks itself out from other distros, and Ubuntu’s Gnome is one of the most striking.
There’s no attempt to replicate the layout found in Windows or Mac OS, but that doesn’t mean it’s hard to navigate or master. The annotation (opposite) provides a quick look at its key elements, but there’s nothing scary here. (If you really can’t get on with the desktop, you can switch to another – see the box below).
I get around
Your eye will be drawn to the Dock (sometimes called the Dash), a convenient place to quickly open favourite apps and attached drives. Several key apps are pinned here by default, including Firefox, Thunderbird, the Rhythmbox music player and LibreOffice Word.
To view a list of all installed apps on your PC, click the Show Apps button in the bottom-left corner to open the Launcher. When you open an app from here, you’ll see its icon also appear in the Dash beneath the pinned apps list, complete with a red dot next to it. This indicates the app is currently open. Unpinned app icons vanish the moment the app is closed, so if you find yourself using an app frequently, right-click the Dash icon when it’s open and choose Pin To Dash (conversely, right-click unused apps and choose Unpin to remove them and clear space for others).