Apt-get Question...

[oldgeezer]

"I love the explorer interface. I think it is the best thing that windows has going for it."
Exactly! 'doze has absolutely nothing going for it!
For browsing, you just haven't lived until you've used Mozilla 1.6 or Firefox 0.8, which are extremely intuitive - the latter super-fast, too. Now Opera 7.50 has gone gold, and although it is a little more difficult to use, it is still miles ahead of IE, intuitive, feature rich, smallest and was the one that introduced tabbed browsing. It can also save whole sessions. Don't even contemplate continuing using the bug-ridden, security hazard called Explorer.
For regular file access and manipulation, KDE Konq is adequate, but there's a large selection of entirely different UIs that appeal to different folks. Take a look at Flonix to decide whether that suits you better?
OG

[Hunkah]

I think you are mistaking what I meant. IE vs. EI (explorer interface)
Internet Explorer now sucks in compairison to Firefox! I totally agree with you one that.

But I have yet to find a "File Browser" that works as nice as "Windows Explorer" (Windows Explorer is not Internet Explorer) I have tried many of them Konq just doesn't work for me. It is too confusing. I like the detailed view with the folders window open. To me that is as good as it gets.

Please, if anyone knows of one that looks and feels like "Windows Explorer" tell me! I would love to see what it looks like. It will help me understand the linux filesystem!

[Durand Hicks]

You could try xfe, but it isn'e nearly as full featured as konqueror. Konqueror can be made to output detailed view like you have in windows explorer. All you had to do was change the view mode to detailed view. It's that simple.

Btw, windows explorer is internet explorer. Don't believe me? When you go to windows, right-click explorer.exe and right-click iexplore.exe. You'll see they are one and the same, just tweaked to view things differently. The explorer.exe from win95/NT has the one that's not the same as iexplore.exe. You can also do a test, open windows explorer and type www.yahoo.com in the address box. Be prepared to get shocked and pick your jaw up off the floor.

Durand

[Hunkah]

Sorry, yes I did know that... I was just, umm, yah... I guess I can't talk my way out of that one.

I did know that IE is Explorer. But I also said they weren't the same thing. What I meant was the GUI isn't the same.

Here! This is what I like!!!

[champagnemojo]

Which features in Explorer's GUI aren't in Konqueror? Konqueror does the sidebar and all...

[Hunkah]

Alright, I know I can mimic the GUI but...
The breakdown is what I don't get. It just seems so confusing.
I know this is just nit-picking off an elephant's butt, but I guess it is something that I will learn eventually.

One question I do have is, are Disks/Partitions/(File System)/Folders/Files the exact same thing in Linux as it is in windows? Like for some reason I find that people will interchange the word Partition for the word Folder. For example, When I do an install it looks as though I have three partitions. Yet isn't /root a partiton also? Or does /root exist within "/" partition? Frig, I am over complicating this, I know. But I think I am starting to think I have a handicap. I can't go to point C until I get from A to B first.

This is the thing I am confused about most. If I ever get this nailed down... I think I will like working with linux. I just hate not knowing where things are and how it is logically set up.

The other thing that drives me crazy is the details view doesn't stick in Konqueror! Every time I burrow down into the file system, it changes back to icon view for every folder I go down. Is there anyway to "save settings"?

[champagnemojo]

I think I understand what you're asking about the partitions/folders thing. It depends on how you install things. If you just run knoppix-installer and don't mess with the config file at all everything will be just folders (/home, /root, etc.). But it's possible to specify a separate partition for things like /home, so that you can reinstall without losing all the stuff inside of it. Does that make sense?

[Durand Hicks]

If you want your details view to stick, first set the details view, and desired sort order if you like, then click on settings>save view profile: filemanagement. That will make it stick.

[eco2geek]

One question I do have is, are Disks/Partitions/(File System)/Folders/Files the exact same thing in Linux as it is in windows? Like for some reason I find that people will interchange the word Partition for the word Folder. For example, When I do an install it looks as though I have three partitions. Yet isn't /root a partiton also? Or does /root exist within "/" partition?

In Linux, the file system begins with / (root) and expands like an upside-down tree. Hard disk partitions can be mounted anywhere within that tree, and are usually mounted on directories specifically created to be used as mount points.

When you run the Knoppix installer, unless you manually change its configuration file, it installs itself completely on one hard disk partition, mounted as / (root). However, the books I've read often recommend using three or more hard disk partitions for Linux, usually /, /home, and /boot (so that if one of those partitions gets screwed up, the damage is limited to that one partition).

And of course there's the swap partition, which you can't "see" within Linux.

Say you have a Windows partition on hda1, and you mount it within Knoppix at /mnt/hda1. All /mnt/hda1 is, before you mount the Windows partition, is a directory you intend to use as a mount point. You could use it to store files. But as soon as you mounted the Windows partition on it, you'd no longer see the files you saved there...until you unmounted the Windows partition again.

You could theoretically mount the Windows partition to any directory you wanted to, but it would mess things up if you mounted it to the wrong one!

Your CD-ROM is (in Debian, at least) mounted at /cdrom, which again is just a regular directory before you actually mount your CD-ROM there.

(It's too bad Windows got people in the habit of using the term "folder" instead of "directories" and "subdirectories." Just makes things conceptually harder to understand IMHO.)

[user unknown]

To underline one issue:

The root partition is '/' but there is a directory '/root', which is the home of root and called ... 'root'.
Normally, the home of root isn't an own partition.

In most cases it would be good to refer to partitions as /dev/hda7, and to directorys as /usr/share.
To say: "There are only 10 MB free space left on /usr/share" isn't accurate - since you don't use quotas - but 'free space on /dev/hda7'.

One difference between Windows and Linux is the idea, to hide the hardware-issues from the user.
You don't have to manage 'Drive A: C: D:' - these are mounted (or not) to the filesystem. This is useful, if you try to find files, no matter on which partition you lost them , using the commandline.
Another big difference is the existance of symbolic links. They don't exist in Windows.
And there is no /dev /proc /sys - filesystem on windows.