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Disks, partitions and filesystems

Posted 10-27-2020 at 10:08 AM by hazel
Updated 01-05-2022 at 12:57 PM by hazel

One thing that Linux newbies often find confusing is the way that Linux deals with disks. Windows does its disk management "under the hood". Partitions are checked to see if they are organised in a way that Windows recognises; if so, they are automatically "mounted", i.e. made available to the system. Each disk or partition is given a letter by which it can be accessed, starting with C: (A: and B: were historically reserved for floppy disks). Unrecognised disks, including Linux...

hazel

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Posted in For newbies

Views 1662 Comments 1 hazel is offline

Everything's a file

Posted 10-09-2020 at 11:31 AM by hazel
Updated 03-28-2021 at 02:57 AM by hazel

In most operating systems, a file is simply and solely a named block of data stored in a particular area or areas of a disk drive, which can be retrieved and optionally modified at will. In Unix systems like Linux, quite a few other things besides stored data masquerade as files. Hence the old joke that in Unix, everything's a file. It's not quite true but there is some truth in it. Things that aren't files but behave as if they were make Unix systems much simpler internally than many other OS's....

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in Linux kernel

Views 810 Comments 1 hazel is offline

All kinds of version numbers

Posted 08-28-2020 at 05:44 AM by hazel

A novice in on of the LQ forums recently complained that he couldn't understand version numbers in Linux. That's not perhaps surprising because software version numbers are used in several different ways, often simultaneously. Every program or library that is in active development goes through different versions as its developer adds features or corrects reported bugs. The Linux kernel is no exception, for it is, after all a program. But over the years, the kernel versioning system has become a...

hazel

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Posted in Linux kernel, For newbies

Views 3583 Comments 0 hazel is offline

How to read man pages

Posted 01-10-2020 at 10:50 AM by hazel
Updated 01-16-2020 at 04:48 AM by hazel

The Problem
Linux newbies tend to find man pages somewhat offputting. That may be because they are very concentrated, compressing a large amount of information into a small, highly-formatted package. They go back conceptually to the original UNIX Programmers' Manual, which was designed for experts who just wanted to bone up on something occasionally.

When the GNU people were creating GNU/Linux, they included man pages but also provided an alternative called info pages. This...

hazel

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Posted in For newbies

Views 2446 Comments 2 hazel is offline

Choosing a Linux distribution

Posted 11-25-2019 at 05:52 AM by hazel
Updated 01-16-2020 at 04:49 AM by hazel

Tags distributions

The problem

One of the commonest newbie questions on this site is "What Linux distro would you recommend for me to use?" It's understandable that newbies ask this question. With Windows, the answer to "What Windows should I run?" is easy: the latest one that will run on your machine (and that is still supported by Microsoft and the companies that produce your antivirus software). But Linux comes in a lot more than 57 varieties, most of them equally up to date. Which then should...

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in For newbies

Views 1888 Comments 1 hazel is offline

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