Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Monday 17 September 2007, Marti Andrews wrote:

> I don't know, you tell me! Is it hidden or something? Remember, I'm BRAND
> new to all this, I haven't done any reading yet, figuring it should all be
> intuitive. I'm clicking on System Menu, Users Folders, navigating to the
> etc folder, and looking for a folder called fstab. Looking alphabetically.
> Not there.

Troy probably hit it.  It's a file, not a folder, so it will be further down.  
I'm 100% positive you have an /etc/fstab file.

Why are we looking for it again?

Anyway, it sounds like part of the problem is you need to come to grips with 
the Unix way of handling filesystems, compared with the DOS way, which has 
continued forward to be the Windows way.

The DOS/Windows way is really stupid.  You install a new hard drive, or 
repartition an old one, and now what was F: is now G:, and G: is now H: and 
blah blah.  You have to update links to everything when you change something, 
and this is particularly evil in the age of the Registry.

The Unix way is utterly different, and mind-boggling at first, but it makes so 
much more sense at the end of the day.  When you boot, you have to tell the 
kernel where to find the root partition.  This becomes the / directory, and 
this is the base of the entire tree.  Everything else will be mounted on this 
tree somewhere.  A mountpoint is simply a directory.  When you mount a 
filesystem volume (hard disk partition, CD, DVD, USB stick, etc.) onto the 
directory (um, directory and folder mean the same thing) it becomes the path 
through which you access the contents of the volume.

Thus instead of F:\My Files\Foo you might wind up with something 
like /media/hdb6/My Files/Foo on your Linux system.

I'm not sure what all the hullabaloo about not putting icons for your 
partitions is though.  This is certainly possible.  I guess I'm thinking of 
KNOPPIX where I've seen the desktop come up with links 
to /media/hdb6, /media/hda4 and whatever.  Probably that configuration option 
they're all telling you about, but I don't use graphical froo froo for 
managing my filesystems as a rule, and I can't relate to how you next 
generation people think.

<shakes fist at all the young whippersnappers>
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre