On 10 Feb 2003 15:04:06 +1100, Stephen Kuhn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2003-02-10 at 14:56, Russ wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > I have been trying to learn how Linux's file system works and what goes > > where. I am gaining ground. Here is my pet peeve though. When navigating > > the various files and folders, you do not know which actual partition it > > is on. In windows explorer it separates the drives and shows you what is > > on each. I hate to say it (especially here) but I like how windows > > explorer works. The left column gives you a list of all drives, > > floppies, CD's and what not. Makes it easy to navigate your file system. > > Is there a file manager for Linux that does this as well? This would > > help me keep all these things straight. > > > > Thanks > > Russ > > > > This is the nature of the *nix file system structure. Every partition > and/or drive is mounted as part of the file system. This allows you to > have many drives, but a single file structure. To my knowledge, there > are heaps and heaps of different file managers, but nothing that will > ever show anything like a drive. > > If you've done a default installation side-by-side with a Windows > installation, you will find your Windows partition under /mnt/ > > The true beauty of the file system was designed from the beginning (more > than 30 years ago) to be able to have a single file system. > > If you open up a console window, you can type: > > sfdisk --list > > ...to get a listing of the partitions > > You can type: > > mount > > ...to view the drive mountings. > > If you're in KDE, you can type > > kwikdisk > > ...to show how drives are mounted and allow you to mount/unmount from > your system tray. > > Remember that you're going to have to rethink/relearn how the file > system works. In the reality of it, the MSDOS manner of drive labelling > is actually more clunky and less logical...only 26 drives? > Hmmmm...strange...(grin) > > Peace!
I agree 100%. A user should not have to even _think_ about physical devices. Everything should be transparent in a single hierarchy. The beauty of the UNIX way is that you can mount _any_ device (not just local partitions) at any point in the hierarchy, providing unparallelled power and flexibility. This may not be very evident on a single system with only a few partitions, but it becomes very obvious when multiple partitions and networked machines are involved. Russ, if you want to learn Linux/UNIX you will have to realise that it is a very different system than Windows, and that everything exists for a very good reason. You will have to 'unlearn' a lot of the (bad) habits and terms you learnt from Windows in order to properly adjust. Don't worry, it's isn't as hard as it sounds. I was in the same situation as you, back in 1999. I had been using DOS/Windows since 1985, and it seemed to make perfect sense to me. After I switched to GNU/Linux, I finally realised how stupid things can be in the DOS/Windows world. If you open your mind, you can learn all kinds of new and neat stuff :) -- Sridhar Dhanapalan [Yama | http://www.pclinuxonline.com/] "When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'." -- Linus Torvalds
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