01-intro.Rmd

# QGIS installation and Graphical User Interface {#installation}

## QGIS installation

It is possible to install QGIS on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, and Android operating systems. The installers can be downloaded from [this website](https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html), and [this link](https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/alldownloads.html#) provides detailed installation instructions.

By the time of writing this document, the last version of QGIS is `3.8.2 Zanzibar`, which was released on October 16, 2019.

## QGIS Graphical User Interface

The QGIS graphical user interface (GUI) is composed of: 

- **Menu bar**: gives access to the main functionalities of QGIS.
- **Toolbars**: give a quick access to QGIS functionalities.
- **Panels**: they provide several functionalities, for instance managing layers, and browsing spatial data.
- **Map display**: shows the spatial data of the current project.

```{r echo=FALSE, fig.align='center',fig.cap='QGIS GUI'}
knitr::include_graphics('figures/QGIS_interface.png')
```

It is possible to customize the appearance of QGIS by navigating to **View** from the **Menu bar**. From here, you can select the panels and toolbars you want to display. I would recommend toggling the **Processing Toolbox** from the panel because it allows to quickly access to the main operations available in QGIS.