Quick Start Guide

on a partition or a device unless it is mounted. But don't worry— most of the time
you do not have to mount partitions or devices manually. During the installation
of your system, you can dene partitions to be mounted automatically when the
system is started. Removable devices are usually also detected and mounted
automatically by your system. The desktop environments such as KDE or GNOME
will inform you about the appearance of a new device.
Figure 6.2 Autodetection of a USB Stick in KDE
Although this concept of mounting and unmounting may appear complicated or
cumbersome at rst sight this also oers great exibility. For example you can
easily mount a directory from a another machine over the network and act on
that directory as though it were located on your local machine.
Case-Sensitivity
Linux distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase letters in the le system.
For example, whether you name a le test.txt, TeST.txt or Test.txt makes a
dierence in Linux. This also holds true for directories: You cannot access a direc-
tory named Letters by the name letters.
File Extensions
As opposed to Windows, les in Linux may have a le extension, such as .txt,
but do not need to have one. When you start working with the shell this sometimes
makes it dicult for beginners to dierentiate between les and folders, depending
on the command you use to list the contents of a directory. Learn more about
some basic shell commands in Chapter 7, Shell Basics (page 85). If you use the
graphical le managers in GNOME or KDE (see Section “Managing Folders and
Files with Nautilus” (Chapter 2, Working with Your Desktop, ↑GNOME User Guide)
and Section “Using Dolphin File Manager” (Chapter 2, Working with Your Desktop,
↑KDE User Guide)) les and folders are symbolized by various dierent icons
depending on the view you choose.
76 Start-Up