Linux Terms

This page is intended as a reference to look at whenever confusing results from terms in How-To posts, or general posts. These terms are intended to get the new reader or user up to speed.

• Directory - same thing as a folder in Windows. The basic organizational system for the Linux file structure.
• Home Directory - the directory where most applications that have per user configuration files save data. It should have the same name as your user name, and be located in /home/username. In Gnome (on Ubuntu) there should be a "little house" by it. This directory should have directories in it such as Documents.
  See ~
• ~ - represents the home directory. Thus, if you were in the directory /home/username/Documents, you might see it written ~/Documents
• *nix - any Unix style machine, such as Linux, Unix, Solaris. "*" is a wildcard symbol in regular expressions
• root - the administrator of a *nix machine
• sudo - when entered before a command, it allows that command to be run as root. For example, to make a directory in /root you could run the command This command is only on some Linux distros.
• Distro - Short for distribution. There are many different versions of Linux, these variants are called distros.