After installation, there is a checklist that you should complete (e.g. http://example.org/civicrm/admin/configtask)
Some of the things needed for a first-time setup:
<ol>
<li>enable the components
<li>check/enable permissions (Drupal)
<li>set the headers and footers for mailings
<li>set the message template for mailings
Interestingly, CiviCRM optionally uses <code>[http://wkhtmltopdf.org/ wkhtmltopdf]</code> to convert HTML to PDF