Take the desktop tour
The big selling point of Elementary OS is its desktop – here’s what you need to know.
Once you’ve installed Elementary OS, you’re whisked through a setup wizard. It repeats the questions about language and keyboard layout, then asks you to set up your user account. Enter your name, and a suggested username is given, which can be changed as you see fit. You also need to provide a password to protect your account – Elementary OS guides you towards one it deems suitably strong. The Device Name – your virtual machine’s name as it would appear on your home network – can also be changed at this point. Once done, click Finish Setup.
You’re now prompted to log into Elementary – if you’re running it in VirtualBox, you’ll have seen the compatibility warning during installation, so click the power button in the top-right corner and choose Shut Down. Once done, click Settings, select Display and switch the Graphics Controller back to VMSVGA. While you’re here, tick Enable 3D Acceleration, then click Start to reboot Elementary. You’ll see the screen has shrunk to just 800x600 and can’t be resized – fixing this requires you to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions, which is covered in the boxout (below-left).