The Linux file system

Now's the time to learn a little bit about the Linux file system. We'll learn about where Linux puts it stuff, where to find stuff and a little bit about what that stuff is.

The Linux shell

When you're running Linux and start to type things on that black screen, you are using a shell. Any operating system uses a shell to get commands from the keyboard to the computer. It's a lot easier than punching holes in cards like they used to do in the old days. There are actually programs for Linux where you talk through a microphone and Linux will carry out commands that you've programmed in advance. It's really cool. For now, though, we'll concentrate on the keyboard. The most popular shell used for Linux is the bash shell. bash means "Bourne Again Shell". It is a free version of the Bourne shell and uses a little play on words, as you can see.

Getting in and out of directories with 'cd'

We saw a few commands in the last lesson, but we didn't go into them much. We will handle a lot of commands in more detail in later lessons. This lesson will cover those commands which you will need to see what's under Linux's hood.

The first one we should look at is 'cd'. Again MS-DOS users will be familiar with this. cd will get you in and out of directories.

Try this one: cd /

This will get you into the 'root' or main directory. It's the directory of directories, the king of kings, your show of shows. The root directory shouldn't be confused with root's directory. That is /root.

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