 You can download QGIS from QGIS.org. Here you see in the banner that the newest version is 3.14 pi, which has just been released. However, if we go to the upper left corner of the site, we can see two version numbers. So the latest is 3.14.0, but there's another one, 3.10.7, which is called LTR, the long-term release. And in the upper right, we see the times and the dates of the upcoming releases. Now we need to download and install the LTR version, because that is a long-term release, which means that it is maintained for a longer time than bug fixes, in this case 3.10.7. For the course you can download the latest LTR version in the 3.10 series. Newer versions have new features, and it's fun to try those features. However, new bugs can also be introduced. Therefore, it's not recommended to use the newest versions for operational use or for courses. So now we click download now to go to the download page. For this course, we assume that you use the Windows operating system. There are different installers here. There is the OSGO 4W installer, which is for more advanced use. And we have here the standalone installers, which have the 3.14, the newest version, and the long-term release. And we are going to install here the long-term release. Now you have to determine if you have a 64-bit or a 32-bit computer, because it has different installers. To find out, go to your file explorer and click write on this PC and click properties. Now you can see what kind of operating system you have, and in my case I have the 64-bit. You could also see that I have 16 gigabytes of RAM, which is recommended for GIS. So now you can install the 64-bit installer and simply go through the wizard and complete it. After installing, you can search for it by doing a search in your operating system. And each time we start QGIS in this course, we use the QGIS desktop 3.10. Whatever version you have after the dot. And then the splash screen will show and QGIS is starting. Once QGIS is started, we can see this screen. It has some news messages and the project templates. This place will be later occupied by the map canvas where the layers are visualized. We also see a layers panel and a browser panel. In the layers panel, our GIS layers will be listed. In the browser panel, we can navigate to the files on our file system and it will recognize GIS formats. We can also link there to online layers and to databases. On top, we see the main menu with different options. And we see a toolbar with shortcut buttons to the different operations that we can do. And then at the bottom, we have information about the projection and the scale. You can easily move these panels. Here, for example, I drag the layers panel over the browser panel so they are visible in different tabs. Which saves a lot of space, especially if you have a small laptop screen. By clicking the blank project button, I can clear the map canvas so our layers will be visible there. Let's explore the main menu. In the project menu, you can load and save project files. You can also access your print layouts. In the view menu, you can activate or deactivate panels and toolbars. If you might have accidentally closed a panel, you can find it back easily there. In the layers menu, you can create or add a layer. And in the settings menu, you can change the settings of QGIS. For example, the language. By default, QGIS detects the language of your computer. In this course, we use English. After changing to another language, you need to restart QGIS. We frequently will use the plugins menu to look for plugins. Core plugins are already installed. For other plugins, you need an internet connection. In the vector menu, you find the vector tools. In the raster, the raster tools. There's database tools. There's web tools. And there is the processing toolbox that we will use. In the help menu, you can find assistance and check your QGIS version. And when the new releases are coming out. Let's further explore the browser panel. The browser panel gives access to your files. You can create favorites, for example. You can browse your disk and you can add a folder to your favorites. When you expand the folder and the subfolders, it will detect the file type. So it will indicate if it's a raster or a vector or a database. In the toolbar, you can find a lot of icons for saving, for zooming in and out, for zooming to the full extent. To create a new map view and other options such as identify features, open new data sources and all the editing that you can do with vectors. We're going to add a first layer of the whole world by typing world in the coordinate field. And then I can show how to use the zoom button. And you can use the scroll button to more easily scroll in and out. Here you can change the projection of the project. You can choose it from a list or you can type their keywords or EPSG codes that you will learn more about. This is the context menu of a layer. You can zoom to the layer extent or you can open the attribute table. The attribute table shows the attributes in the layer and it has a table view and it also has a form view and you can toggle between the two buttons. So we most often need the table view to do the editing. This was just a quick overview to get you started. In the course you will learn all the features in detail.