Don't be afraid - Linux for Newbies (Part 5)

Part 5: How to use Linux

So, you've dared it - you installed Linux. Now, as I said earlier, there's still a lot to learn, but most modern distributions make it easy for you to start without too much knowledge. Here are some things that might interest you:

OK, I have Linux installed. Where is "My Computer"?
Linux follows a different idea than Windows in terms of organising files, programs and hardware. Everything (including the contents of the hard drives) is somehow bound into the so called root directory '/'. If you open this position in a file manager (e.g. Konqueror or Nautilus) in Linux you'll see these (or similar) directories:

• bin This contains executables like ls or cp.
• boot The boot manager and other boot files are in this directory.
• dev Device files like /dev/lp0 or /dev/fd0 are in this directory. They will be explained later.
• etc Global configuration files are saved here, like fstab or X11/xorg.conf
• home The users each have a directory, which is normally in /home/
• lib Shared libraries are saved here.
• lost+found This doesn't actually belong to Linux but to the file system on which the root directory is installed. (Here: ext3)
• media and mnt are used for mounting drives.
• opt Data that doesn't belong anywhere else is put in opt.
• proc This is not really a directory, but a virtual directory. The (virtual) files in here give you information about your system.
• root This is the home directory of the superuser 'root'
• sbin Also contains executables like bin, however these are restricted to the superuser.
• sys Some system files may be saved here
• tmp Temporary files are often put in this directory. All users may write into here.
• usr Typically software will be installed into here.
• var Files, that are changed constantly (e.g. logs) are often saved in here.

What is this terminal?
Remember the "typing commands stuff", I told you, you didn't have to do most of the time? Well, it's true, you don't. However, some things tend to be easier with a terminal window (or, to use the correct name: a terminal emulator).
There are many different terminal emulators for Linux and Unix, some of which are: xterm, GNOME Terminal, Konsole, xfce4-terminal and aterm.
When in your graphical environment, simply press ALT+F2 and enter one of these terminal names - xterm is normally installed, so we can go for that.

This terminal emulator is normally running a program called bash. You can find many tutorials for bash on-line, but for the beginning, I'd suggest to have a look at this collection of commands and to have a closer look at ls, cd, cp, mv and rm. That should get you started.


How can I access my hard drives / old data?
I've written an extensive article about that here. If you have further questions about mounting or anything else Linux-related after reading here, feel free to ask in our Linux forum.

How do I install new programs?
Many distributions nowadays have package systems (in Debian based systems that's apt-get, with SuSE it's Yast, Fedora has Yum...) that make life very easy a lot of the time. But ever so often, you'll find that you can't get a program that way. Instead you'll be able to download a .tar.bz2 or .tar.gz file. To install these, you'll have to do this in a Terminal:

1. Unpack the download. If it's a .tar.gz (or .tgz sometimes), use
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   1. tar xzvf download-xyz.tar.gz
   and for .tar.bz2 use
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   1. tar xjf download-xyz.tar.bz2
2. Find the name of the newly created directory with
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   1. ls
   and enter it with
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   1. cd directoryname
3. Check, what's in the new directory with
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   1. ls
   Normally, there should be a configure file and a makefile amongst the new data. Often, there's also a ReadMe or INSTALL file, containing instructions. You can read that with
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   1. less INSTALL
   (exit with 'q')
4. If there's a configure file (and no instructions suggesting anything else), the next step is
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   1. ./configure
   This should make preparations for the installation.
5. Next step is
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   1. make
   This will build the software for your system.
6. Now you may need to become superuser, so type
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   1. su
   and enter the root password. (If sudo is installed and you know how to use it, you're free to do that too.)
7. To start the actual installation, we type
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   1. make install
   It should now show the installation process.
8. Last, but not least, you can log out the root user with
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   1. exit
   You should be finished now.

If any errors occurred at some point, search for the error on Google. Quite often, you can find a solution that way.

Back to Part 4 or Continue with Part 6