Installation guide

124 Chapter 12. Managing Files and Directories
• /tmp — Reserved directory for all users to store temporary files. Files stored here are not perma-
nent. A system process removes old files from this directory on a periodic basis. Do not write any
files or directories that you want to keep here.
Your Red Hat Linux system is compatible with many other Linux distributions because of the Filesys-
tem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). The FHS guidelines help to standardize the way system programs and
files are stored on all Linux systems.
To learn more about the FHS, refer to the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide Reference Guide.
You can also visit the FHS website: http://www.pathname.com/fhs.
12.2. Identifying and Working with File Types
If you are new to Linux, you may see files with extensions you do not recognize. A file’s extension
is the last part of a file’s name after the final dot (in the file sneakers.txt, "txt" is that file’s
extension).
Here is a brief listing of file extensions and their meanings:
12.2.1. Compressed and Archived Files
• .bz2 — a file compressed with bzip2
• .gz — a file compressed with gzip
• .tar — a file archived with tar (short for tape archive), also known as a tar file
• .tbz — a tarred and bzipped file
• .tgz — a tarred and gzipped file.
For information on working with bzip2, gzip, and tar files, refer to Section 12.3.
12.2.2. File Formats
• .au — an audio file
• .gif — a GIF image file
• .html/.htm — an HTML file
• .jpg — a JPEG image file
• .pdf — an electronic image of a document
• .png — a PNG image file
• .ps — a PostScript file; formatted for printing
• .txt — a plain ASCII text file
• .wav — an audio file
• .xpm — an image file