# Introduction to the Desktop

The desktop is the component of the operating system which is responsible for the elements that appear on the desktop: The Panel, the Wallpaper, the Control Center, the menus... etc.

The Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint uses the Cinnamon desktop which is both intuitive and powerful.

## The Menu

In Cinnamon, almost everything is accessible from the 'Menu'. To open it, click on Menu at the bottom-left of your screen, or press Ctrl Super_L (Super_L is the left Windows key on your keyboard).

### The Cinnamon Menu

The menu is used to launch applications, to access the system settings, and to reach common places and open recent files.

## Places

In Linux Mint, all your personal data is stored in your Home directory.

As well as your files, this directory also contains pre-defined sub-directories such as Documents, Music, Videos...etc which you can use to better organize your files.

Other important places are your Desktop folder (which containsn the files visible on your desktop), the filesystem (which contains all system files and directories), removable devices connected to the computer, the network and bookmarks (you can bookmark any directory to gain quick-access to it).

To quickly access one of these places, perform one of the following actions:

- Click on Menu and select Places

- Launch Nemo, the Cinnamon file manager, by clicking on Menu and selecting Files. Then, within Nemo, you can access common places by clicking on them in the sidebar, on the left of the window.

### Nemo, the file manager, listing the content of the Home directory and providing quick-access to common places from the left sidebar.

## System Settings

To launch the system settings, click on Menu and select System Settings.

### System Settings