Chapter 1. First Contact / 1.4. File Management | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 1.3. Desktop | 1.5. Applications |  | |
Chapter 1. First Contact / 1.4. File Management | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.3. Desktop | 1.5. Applications | | |
A central part of your desktop environment is a file manager application, enabling you easily to create, access, and manage all files on your system. Traditional file management in Linux would have been done via the command line, requiring some deeper knowledge of several commands to list, create, delete, or edit files and their properties. A file manager provides a graphical and more intuitive way to handle these tasks. Learn more about the file managers of GNOME and KDE in Section 3.3, “File Management with Nautilus” and Section 4.3, “Konqueror as a File Manager”.
Unlike a Windows operating system, Linux does not use drive
letters. In Windows, you would address the floppy drive as
A:\, Windows system data is under
C:\, and so on. In Linux, all files and directories are
located in a tree-like structure. The topmost directory is
referred to as the file system root or just /. All other
directories can be accessed from here.
The following is a short guide through the Linux file system tree, introducing the most important directories:
/home/<username>
/home holds the private data of every user who has
an account on your system. The files located here can only be modified
by their owner or the system administrator. Your e-mail directory is
located here, for example.
/media
/media generally holds any type of drive except the
hard drive of your system. Your USB flash drive appears under
/media once you have connected it, as does your
digital camera (if it uses USB) or your DVD or CD drive. As soon as the
data source is disconnected (think of an USB flash drive or your
camera), the respective directory under media is
removed as well.
/usr/share/doc
Under /usr/share/doc, find any kind of
documentation on your Linux system and the installed packages. The
manual subdirectory holds a digital copy of this
manual as well as the Administration Guide and the release notes of the installed
version of SUSE LINUX. The packages
directory holds the documentation included in the software packages.
/windowsIf you have both MS Windows and Linux installed on your ystem, this is where you find the MS Windows data.
Learn more about the Linux file system concept and find a more comprehensive list of directories in Section 19.1.2, “Files and Directories”.
Apart from organizing all your data and previewing almost any type of file, your file manager can act as a “quick finder” for personal data, system information, and network services. These modules are part of your standard desktop.
Use the desktop icon in GNOME or the icon depicting a small house in the KDE panel to launch your file manager (Nautilus in GNOME, Konqueror in KDE) showing all the contents of your home directory. This option allows you to quickly retrieve any personal data located in your home directory.
If you need to know which hard drives or removable media are connected to your system, click the desktop icons (GNOME) or (KDE). The file managers provide an overview of all drives attached to your system, including the hard drives. As you click one of the drives listed there, the file manager opens the files and directories located on this drive. This option allows you to locate data on any kind of removable device attached to your system. A digital camera appears in this list as does a USB flash or hard drive.
Use the menu in the top GNOME panel to access network folders. In KDE, click the desktop icon to gather all services provided in your network. Use this functionality to access available network shares and Windows networks, FTP servers, or any other service type that has been registered for your network.
If you need to search for certain file across the whole system, use the
graphical search applications provided by your desktop environment. In
GNOME, select + to launch the search tool. The first dialog prompts you for
the name or at least a part of the name of the file. Specify the directory
to search for the file. If you know for sure the file should
be located in your home directory, accept the
/home/<username> path that has automatically
been selected. To launch a search on the entire file system,
select the file system root by entering /. Refine your
search by adding more search criteria. Click and select any of the criteria offered there. It is even
possible to use regular expressions or wild cards. As soon as you enter
all data, hit to launch the search and see the
result in the bottom part of the window. Depending on the scope of your
search, the whole process may take a considerable amount of time.
KDE contains the application KFind, which is launched from the main menu
with . The search window is divided into
the tabs , ,
and . In the
tab, enter the name of the file using wild cards, like asterisks
or question
marks, if needed. Enter the path to search and determine whether the search
should include subfolders or be case sensitive. The
tab is used to search the contents of files for
certain expressions. This type of search is only supported for a limited
number of file types. such as text files and OpenOffice.org or
KWord formats. You can
even use regular expressions if KRegExpEditor is installed (package
kdeutils3-extra). To
limit the scope of the search by providing attributes like file owner, file
size, or modification date, use the tab.
![[Tip]](admon/tip.png) | More Information about Search Patterns |
|---|---|
For more information about search patterns and the use of wild cards or regular expressions, refer to Section 19.1, “Introduction to Bash”. | |
