File Directories

I reciently installed linux red hat 9 onto my computer. I was surprised with the amount of driver support it has and all the icons and layout looks nice.

However when browsing throughout the root directory and so on it became confusing not knowing what folder is what.

Folders like

etc/
usr/
local/
bin/

and so on.

I also find that most of all confusing is that all the execution files are all put into a single directory (usually bin), but there are bin directories everywhere...

can anyone give me a basic know how onto how exactly this operating system file directory system works???????

thanks

You need linux documentation. Check http://tldp.org/
Having good guides and tutorials.

Hey dont confuse your self and make sure you dont mess with them , what you need to do is what pclovers said, get some book or read some tutorial online, the more you read the more you understand.

However to answer your question:

etc: system configuration.
usr: Contains all commands, libraries, man pages, games and static files for normal operation.
local: The place for locally installed software and other files.
bin: Commands needed during bootup that might be needed by normal users

Hi Matias,

RedHat 9 is very old and very insecure package which is no longer supported by RedHat. I would recommend that you look into Fedora Linux or Centos

Yes, it has old kernel version. Get fedora at : http://fedora.redhat.com/download

This seems fairly accurate: http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/use ... truct.html

due to the nature of your question, i would guess your a beginner with linux period so i would recommend debian (sarge). in my opinion it is quite easy and i feel like it would be great for beginners mainly for the fact that it has an easy to use package managing system. then again i havent used fedora so i cant tell you how good that one is.

when i was still fairly a n00b i tried installing debian, and i never got to a desktop. that pissed me off, lol because i had no CLUE who to use apt and the text based installation was also disliked.
fedora has a much easier install, where the default is a GUI install but there is the option for text based if necessary. they also have the apt package management system for fedora, where once your to the desktop you just open a console, su to root and "yum install apt" should do the trick :]
however, i'm unsure as to what version of debian i was trying to install was..but i wrote on the disk v3.0 and i burned the disk 12-29-04, lol.

but i would also recommend upgrading from RH9 to FC4.

with yum, you can go yum install yumex to get a gui version of yum. There is a gui version of apt that you can get as well, can't remember what it's called.

This site:
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4 ... notes.html
helped me alot when installing some programs, it shwos step by step on how do set things up like apache/mysql/php, different mulitmedia programs, yum+gui, apt+gui, etc.

after you install apt through yum, you can update apt and then install synaptic through apt.

i dont like yum + yumex as much as apt + synaptic.