Arch Linux

denisfalqueto

Member

From: ES, Brazil

Registered: 2006-03-24

Posts: 197

Re: I am a total noob

I gotta be honest though. From a lifetime of windows, linux seems so damn complicated. I was thrown in to this mess of command lines and nano and config files and root and all this stuff. It was really confusing, and still is (though I think I'm catching on ... after all, I've only been doing this for a few days.) I really don't understand how linux 'works' yet. Tutorials and wikis and crap tell you how to do things, but they don't usually explain why it works. I still don't understand the concept of a 'kernel'. I don't understand what a module is or how it works. Mounting is still a vague concept to me. All this stuff is just confusing, and even noob tutorials are hard. And I know there is still so much crap I can do on here that I haven't even heard of yet. 8D Thats why I appreciate the help so don't hate me.

root/superuser privileges : As a normal user, you have limited (i.e. nearly no) power to make systemwide changes - you can only do things that only affect you. You need to gain superuser privileges in order to do anything more. Most programs will explicitly tell you if you need to be root to continue. If you're trying to modify a file and you fail (permissions error) then you problably need to be root.

Well said, just would like to add that, as you came from windows right now, you probably is not used to this concept. In Linux (and Unix in general) you always use a simple user to operate the system. This come from the time when Unix was used in multi-user computers and there were one user to rule them all. That user is called root. This makes a lot of sense, since, if you are going to do some that changes your working system, you have to be conscious of it. This is, commonly, not the case with Windows, in which you always is the administrator, or else you can't do anything useful. I strongly recommend that you create a normal user for you and just use the root to make important things. Please, read this guide. It was one of the firsts I read when I started and it helped me a lot.

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

And this:

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/html/k.html

Kernel : program that takes care of making sure your computer runs - basically sits just above the hardware and mediates requests between hardware and applications, gives out CPU timeslices and RAM, all that fun stuff.

Module : little driver modules that plug into the kernel, telling it how to talk to bits of hardware (or whatever.)

Mounting : before you can read or write to a drive, you have to know what kind of drive it is, what bus it lives on, what filesystem is on it, etc. When you mount it, you tell the kernel that you'd like to mount [this partition] of some [filesystem type], and that you'd like to make the files on the drive visible in some directory somewhere (the mountpoint.)

This is also very important. If you read the beginners guide I suggested, you'll understand it very well. But, briefly, in Linux (and Unix in general), there is not the concept of drive letters (A:, C:, etc). The file system has only one root, and we call it /. If you want to access one particular mass storage device, you (or some other part of the system) must to mount it in some directory. For example, my hard disk has 3 partitions, one with Windows (unfortunately, I work with it), one for Arch and the swap (also read the guide or dictionary for this). My system is configured to attach the partition with the Arch system in / and the partition with Windows in /mnt/windows. This have many advantages, but the more important is understand that you will always have a file system with only one root, and the devices will be attached to one of its subdirectories. This abstraction is very flexible for the system administrator, so is very important that you understand it well. After that, you'll never look for those C:'s with the same eyes.

In short, read a lot and enjoy. The freedom is only sustained with knowledge.

hth

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