hi eric,
hope i deciphered your name correctly out of your email addy!
in linux all your files and directorys (folders) are all part of one
'tree' or hierachy, there are no seperate drive letters for each
physical hard disk or partition. instead each partition is 'mounted' on
a directory of your choice.
an example is, in windows you may have a c,d, and an e drive, in linux
you may choose to see thses drives as /mnt/drivec, /mnt/drived and
/mnt/drivee, if you were to mount the drives like this then a file that
windows sees as d:\some folder\somefile.ext would appear in your linux
sysyem as /mnt/drived/some folder/somefile.ext,
note that /mnt/drived is a directory that you get to choose when you
mount the drive or partition, you can choose any directory name to mount
a partition on (use an empty directory or any files that are already in
it before mounting a partition there will become invisible).
also the files that make up linux are also on partitions and these are
mounted as part of the linux filesystem, when installing linux you will
neeed to choose a partition to be known as / and it is usually a good
idea to have a seperate partition that is known as /home, that way if
you save work in /home and have to reinstall linux you can aviod
formatting /home and keep your work. there are other traditional mount
points for linux files, it is common to have a seperate partition for
/usr since a lot of basic system files get put there by the installtion
process.
how you partition your hard disk and what mount points you create for
linux files depends a lot on how many physical disks you have and what
their capacity is. a lot of people disagree as to exactly what is the
best 'scheme' for partitioning and mounting and i am not such an expert
that i like to get drawn into such discussions!
i hope this goes some way to answering your question, if not then let us
know, there are far more knowledgable people on this list than me!
bascule
Lee LCpl Erik J wrote:
>
> I just started using linux, and can come one explain what a mount point is
> and what each one does. Please.
>
> Erik
>
> Name: winmail.dat
> winmail.dat Type: unspecified type (application/octet-stream)
> Encoding: x-uuencode
