This page is intended to be an introduction into Linux for the absolute beginner or “Newbie” as he or she is often known. So let’s jump in at the shallow end! What is Linux? It’s a computer operating system (OS), just like Microsoft Windows, it loads up and runs all the other programs that you use on a computer. Without an operating system your computer would be just a brick.

You can run either or both Linux and Microsoft Windows on the same computer, but not at the same time. Whilst running one operating system you can’t run any programmes designed for the other OS, well you can, but it’s tricky and outside the scope of this article.

Linux is similar to the venerable UNIX Operating system as are many other OS’s such as Apples OSX and BSD and users familiar with those OS’s should have few problems switching to Linux, however this article is intended for those switching from Microsoft Windows.

So, in what ways is Linux different from windows?

The first thing you will probably notice is that the file system is different, instead of C:\ drives and D:\ drives you have drives such as hda1 sdb1 etc. The first letter h, s, or f stands for hard, serial (e.g. sata or usb drives) or floppy. The second letter, d, just stands for drive. The third letter a, b, c, etc is the drive number ie. “a” is the fist drive, “b” is the second and so on. The fourth character, a number, refers to which partition on that drive.

So hda1 is the first partition (1) on the first hard drive (a). sdb1 is the first partition (1) on the second serial drive (b), which might be a USB stick or an mp3 player, or a sata drive.

The file system on Linux is separated into different directories (folders) using forward slashes “/” unlike windows which uses backslashes “\”

The top level, commonly called root, is just given the designation /, directories under this are given names like /usr /etc /temp /root and /home

The /home directory is probably the most frequently used directory as it contains the personal files of each user.

Let’s assume there are two users of a Linux machine, Tom and Kate.

Tom’s files will all be under his own personal directory /home/tom and Kate’s files will all be under her own personal directory /home/kate nether user will be able to read, write to or execute the files of the other unless special permission is given.

Every Linux system has an administrator or Super User, often called root. This super user is set up during installation of the Linux OS and can access all areas of the file system. Root keeps his files in the /root directory and has the user name of root. It’s always a bad idea for root to use a Linux system in everyday use as it’s an obvious danger as one slip of the keyboard and important system files could be overwritten, and hackers gaining control of a root session would have carte blanche to do what they wanted. Thus it’s common practice to run Linux as a normal user, changing to the root, super user, temporarily whenever necessary to do system maintenance then changing back to normal user.