partition is mounted. Like in DOS and Windows partitions and devices

are allotted drive letters such as C:, D:, E:; in Linux partitions or

devices are mounted onto directories. For example /dev/hda5 is mounted

on /dosd. Normally /dosc, /dosd, would be your mounted dos partitions.

It could also be anything else. Which means you can access your Dos

files through Linux by going through these directories.

Another useful command is ls. Type "ls" and you will see something

like:

bin/ dev/ etc/ lost+found/ proc/ tmp/

boot/ dosc/ home/ mnt/ root/ usr/

cdrom/ dosd/ lib/ opt/ sbin/ var/

Type "ls -l" to see a more complete list. This will show the owners,

permissions, date and time of when last modified and file sizes. You

will need to understand file permissions once you get the hang of the

basic Linux operations. Permissions are useful for multiuser Linux

system where you need to restrict or allow access to files or

directories.

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Sep 17 12:49 bin/

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Oct 4 23:24 boot/

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 2 17:32 cdrom/

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 21504 Oct 22 12:54 dev/

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Oct 2 21:59 dosc/

drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 21504 Jan 1 1970 dosd/

The cd command is used to change directories, you can try by typing

"cd /" to go the root directory. Type "cd -" to return back to where

you were. If you just type "cd" you will return back to your home

directory. Installing softwares, opening compressed files under Linux.

If you download documents, utilities, softwares or anything else for

Linux, you will find that a lot of them have extensions of .tgz or

.tar.gz. In that case you will have to type the following command to

extract the files. Replace filename.tar.gz with the name of the file.

gzip -dc filename.tar.gz | tar xvf -

If you downloaded some Linux files under DOS, chances are that the

file names may get truncated. In that case you will have to rename

your files before extracting them under Linux. To rename files just

type "mv oldfilename newfilename". Replace oldfilename with what the

current file name is and replace newfilename with what you want the

file name to be.

Several files are also in the .rpm format. These formats are for the