Ubuntu: Up and Running

Chapter 5. The Filesystem, File Attributes, and Permissions

If you come from a Windows background, in which hard disks, CD-ROMs, USB thumb drives, and other storage media are assigned drive letters, then you’ll find Ubuntu a little unusual. Mac OS X users, though, will find themselves right at home. The reason for this is that OS X is based on Unix, which uses the same filesystem model to encompass all media available to the operating system.

On a Windows computer, the root of the main hard disk will often be C:\, but in Ubuntu, (as with OS X, Unix, and Linux in general) the root of the filesystem is simply /, a forward slash. And that / is not just the root for the main hard disk, it’s the root of absolutely everything, so if you have more than one storage device attached, they will also be mounted as extensions to the filesystem (I’ll explain how later). Don’t confuse the filesystem root with the user named root.

Note

On Ubuntu this filesystem is sometimes also known as Filesystem, but whether you see file system, File System, or Filesystem, they all refer to the same thing.

The Directory Tree

Right under the root / lies a handful of system files and several subfolders that make up the next level of the Ubuntu filesystem.

Note

The terms folder and directory are generally interchangeable, although you’ll mostly see the word directory used when discussing using the command line, whereas the word folder is mainly used when referring to the desktop. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve chosen ...