Someone explain Linux to me...IRC wasn't too friendly since I'm on XP.

[egosophist]

So I got Redhat,

Because I wanted to use GIMP. I normally use Adobe and figured it would be nice to try out Linux and have some art fun at the same time. I did my research (this was about two years ago) and found another prog, Simian I was going to try.

I was never able to fully understand or graps what the hell I was supposed to do as far as :::Mounting::: things.

If someone could explain this I would be in heaven.

I then spent about a week trying to delete the dual boot feature for linux and windows. It did take an act of God.

I liked the look and feel of Linux I just didn't quite get what I was doing.

I was stoked when I heard Lindows was coming out. But thus it has gotten beyond the realm of free (just as does everything).

[VHockey86]

Well, "mounting" a hard drive partition or other device makes it available for use on the operating system.

I'll try to use a crude analogy here...
Just like how a jockey has to mount himself on a horse in order to ride it... an operating system has to mount a partition in order to access it, (i.e. write/read files).

There are a number of different ways things are mounted. Most things are mounted during startup via the etc/fstab file or something like that. Otherwise things can be manually mounted via a terminal.

What exactly are you trying to mount? Most user-friendly distros, like redhat and mandrake will configure all your hard drives during installation.

[originel]

Lindows isn't very good anywas, so you're not missing much.

ok...mounting:
In order to use any drive it first has to be "mounted." basically what this does is connect the drive to the operatins system and attach it to the file structure. Windows actually uses the same format, it just does it automatically and always mounts drives to A: C: D: E: etc (although you can have it mount to a partition). Once a drive is mounted you can then access it from the file structure (i.e. using a file manager such as Nautilus or Konqueror).

This is one of the biggest differences between windows a linux when you're first switching over. There is no c:, d:, e: etc, they are all part of the same drive. Basically think of / (root directory) as your C: drive. Everything resides in this, including cd drives, other partitions, etc. The actually exist in folders, not separate drives. So your cd drive is usually in /mnt/cdrom. where it is placed is completely arbitraty, /mnt is just generally used out of convention. So if your cd-drive is d: in windows, the exact same location would be /mnt/cdrom in Linux (i.e. if you viewd them both in Windows Explorer and Konqueror you would see the same files).

Mounting is actually quite easy in newer distros. Make sure the folder exists first before you mount a drive and the issue this command:

'mount /dev/<device> /<mount point>'

for example: to mount your cd-drive (assuming it's the secondary master drive) in /mnt/cdrom you would type:

'mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom'

and your cd-drive would be ready to use. all drives will have a /dev/<device> entry. The four IDE connections are /dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. your floppy drive is /dev/fd0. these are of course assuming standard IDE and floppy drives. scsi and usb drives are different.

hope this helps

btw there is a windows version of the GIMP

EDIT: aacckk, i type to slow!

[egosophist]

That explained so much!

Every room I went into on IRC someone would say, "Go get Linux you evil window user!"

I was like I have it already damnitt I can't get the damn thing to run...

Then this was when I would get booted out of the room...LOL

I am off to check out GIMP!!! fer windows....woohoo.

You guys rock!!!~

[Redwolf]

Mounting


This is a task that is normally not really used in Windows or DOS systems, but can be. Basically, when you /mount' a drive, you do two things:

a) Activate the Drive
b) Set a place the computer can access the drive from

Now as you probably know, Linux doesn't use drive letters like Windows or DOS do. Instead, it has a large root (/) directory that runs off a primary drive. Let's say you mount a drive to /usr. If the drive is not mounted, then /usr is normally an empty directory that points to nothing. Mount a drive to /usr though, and now anything under /usr is on the mounted drive, not the root drive.

If you mount a CD under the /mnt/cdrom directory, then the CD is accessed simply by going into the mnt/cdrom directory.

There are pros and cons to this over windows. Pros are that since you can unmount drives at whim, you can save power and lengthen the life of the drive (since it isn't being used at all). If you start to run out of space in Linux and have, say, the most files being in the /home directory, then it's rather elementary to move the /home driectory to a temporary directory, install a new drive, mount it to /home, and move the temporary directory into the new /home directory. You can also restrict access to what drives mount for whom and such. It has many more pros than that, but most of those you'll never deal with unless you set up a massive web server.

The cons are that it is harder to deal with than the windows approach, and generally involve screwing with fstab or mount commands (you learn them after a while, they aren't so hard).

This site explains it better than I can:

http://www.freeos.com/articles/3102/
http://www.freeos.com/articles/4491/

Good luck with the endevar!

Oh, and Lindows was never really truly free. It was meant to sell as a direct compeditor to Windows, but due to some lawsuits and an ambitious open-source effort that fell short (WINE didn't mature as fast as they hoped it would) it never materialized on MS's big threat radar.

[elroy]

Actually there is no explanation for Linux.

[sorry I couldn't resist]

[Redwolf]

Wow...I took that long to respond? I must be typing 6 wpm.