Linux File Info
Redhat Fedora Core I installation sets up a bunch of 1st level directories. I'm going to negleglect most of them and briefly discuss a couple of them.
/root is the directory that stuff gets stored in (mostly) when you are logged on as the administrator (the "root") to make changes in the operating system, to add software available to all users, or to change permissions.
I try to stay out of here, but when you have 100 megabytes of files copied from a CD to a /MyDocuments directory in your directory and find that only "root" can write to the files (word and excel files to be used with Open Office, or Abiword and the Gnumeric spreadsheet). It was much easier to change the permissions (who can do what to a file) from "root" to "dad" by logging in as root.
/usr/bin is of particular interest because this is where links to the scripts for starting most of the included programs are put. If you are asked what program to start a file with (say you want to listen to an npr audio listed on your yahoo home page) this is where it is normally hiding. In this case, we are looking for "realplay" a 2.4 K link to a Shell script.
For listening to mp3 files, I personally recommend using xmms, but that requires adding functionality intentionally missing from this distribution (to avoid possible lawsuits). In contrast, xmms, which was added after installation of the operating system, is a 1 MB binary program, rather than a start script.
/home/lusername is the directory with which you will become very familar, where lusername is the (non-administrator) username that you use when doing stuff on the computer. Keep it short if you expect to do much command line work (and you will once you get the hang of it--especially to install software to your directory) -- mine is /home/dad as short as I could with clarity, as the kids use the computers when they visit.
A much more detailed discussion of the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy is provided in Chapter 6 of Mark Sobell's 2nd edition of A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux. The review for that book is here
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