By default, either method will also start an xterm, which is a small window containing a shell prompt. At the shell prompt, you can type any commands just as you would on a text VC. So you can follow all the examples in this book using xterm; the only difference between an xterm and the text console is that you don’t have to log on to the xterm because you already logged on to X.
There are also a lot of things you can do only in X, which are covered in this chapter.
One note: The default xterm window has a smallish font. If you have a small monitor or very high resolution or bad eyesight, you may want to fix this. Follow these steps:
1. Move the mouse pointer into the center of the xterm window.
2. Hold down the Control key and the right mouse button simultaneously. This will give you a font menu.
3. Point to the font you want and release the mouse button.
9.3 Basic X Operations
There are certain commonly used operations in X that you should familiarize yourself with. This section describes some of the basic operations that you may find useful.
9.3.1 The Mouse
The mouse in X works pretty much the same as the mouse on other systems, except that it has three buttons. If your mouse has only two, you can simulate the middle button by clicking both buttons simultaneously. This is kind of tricky and annoying, so investing in a $15 three-button mouse probably isn’t a bad idea. These are available from most computer retailers.
The buttons are numbered from left to right assuming you have a right-handed mouse. So button one is on the left, two is in the middle, and three is on the right. You may see either the numbers or the locations in documentation.
X has a simple built-in copy-and-paste facility. To select text to copy, you click and drag with the left mouse button. This should select the text to copy, assuming the application you’re using has copy-and-paste support. To paste the text, you click the middle mouse button in a different X application. For example, if you receive an e-mail containing an URL, you can select the URL with the left button and then click in your web browser’s “Location” field with the middle button to paste it in.