Wish I knew of a GUI for this but I don't
From the 80's you must know DOS, so here's some command equivalents:
http://www.control-escape.com/linux/lx-translate.html

Not sure what you mean by "how to get out of the root directory".
cd / ,gets you to the root directory (same as c:\ )
cd ,gets you to your home directory
su ,makes you root (administrator), exit with ctrl-d
cd ,as root (admin) gets you to the roots home directory