For Nils who has helped me or any other expert, and Nubies like me.

[Steven Vollom]

Dear Nils,

Yesterday I decided to take today off, because it seemed like my brain 
was going to explode.

I know so little about what I am doing, when I operate the Linux system, 
that I am always having problems.  Also I am old and it is difficult for 
me to retain new things as easy as when I was younger, so many times I 
get help from knowledgeable users here on the list.  Your help, works or 
solves the problem, but, in the end, I really don't understand what 
happened, because I just followed the instruction to get the desired 
result, I did not really learn what happened to the point of being able 
to remember.

Currently I have several problems which are presented to the 'list'.  By 
'list' I mean the Kubuntu Help and User Discussion, and from time to 
time I will receive help from some kind user.  Many times I don't 
understand the instruction, so I just open a shell, cut-and-paste the 
instruction, and wait to see what happens.

Recently, you, Nils, helped me with a problem where I had a partition 
owned by Root.  I did not know how to access that partition to use it 
for storage so you gave me the following instruction:
____________________________________________________________________________________

(An example of why I get screwed up.)  I am going to cut and paste a 
comment I made to you.
I just did what you instructed and here is what happened:

> >> steven at Studio25:~$ sudo mkdir /media/sdb5/$USER
> >> [sudo] password for steven:
> >> steven at Studio25:~$ sudo chown $USER /media/sdb5/$USER
> >> steven at Studio25:~$
> >>
> >> What did I just do?

(By the way thank you for the word prepend, never heard it before but like it very much)
________________________________________________________________________________________________


Is this a proper translation for what I wrote in the first line of 
instruction?  'sudo' (give me root ability) '/mkdir' (to make a 
directory [or folder]) '/media' (in the media folder) '/sdb5' (of the 
partition sdb5[or does this mean the folder, sdb5) '/$USER' (and the 
folder created is a directory named steven)?

The second line, I assume, is where I typed in my password.

Is this a proper translation for what is said in line 3:  Give me the 
Root permission to change the owner from root to user in the steven 
directory of the sdb5 partition of the media folder of my home directory?

If correct, I may understand something now.

Next:

Nils.  I keep my short-cuts to packages that I use often on the top of 
my Desktop.  Among the Icons that represent those packages is an Icon 
'SYSTEM MENU Menu of Important System Places'  when I click on it, it 
opens Dolphin with a list of my Partitions.  I use this Short-cut every 
time I want to get to a specific partition, or to enter Dolphin.  I do 
not enter any of those folders or storage areas any other way. 

Is there an easier or faster way? 

When I open that short-cut, on the left of the window is a row of 
Bookmarks.  Currently my list is as follows: 
1) Home, 2) Storage Media, 3) Users' Folders, 4) Root, 5) sda7, 6) 
Completed Downloads. 

The first five are self-explanatory, the sixth is a folder in sda5.  I 
use each title as a short-cut to what I want.  How do I change the name 
of a title in Bookmarks to make it understandable to another user?  sda7 
contains movies.  How could I change the sda 7 Bookmark to [Movies]? 

I won't live much longer.  I want my children to be able to access the 
contents of my computer easily.  They are Windows users and won't know 
what things like 'sda7' mean.  I would like to give them a starting 
place with simple shortcuts, so that when they are grieving, they can 
find my stuff easily.  I don't want them to have to go find an expert to 
translate for them, if possible.  I am pretty sure they will grieve when 
I die; I also think they will assume there are important things in my 
computer, and be stuck with a difficult problem understanding Linux 
unique way of saying things. 

Also, how can I change the order of the Bookmarks.  I want the first 
entries of list of bookmarks to take them to areas that contain 
information easily understood by a novice.  I want folders that require 
Linux operation knowledge at the bottom of the list.  If they opened my 
home folder or Users' folder, it would be total confusion for them.

When I open 'Storage Media' in the 'Bookmarks' column of the content of 
the Icon 'SYSTEM MENU Menu of Important System Places' in the row of 
short-cut Icons on my Desktop, I show a list of my partitions + an entry 
for my Floppy Drive.  (In the preceding paragraph I mentioned sda7 which 
contained movies).  It is represented in 'Storage Media' as [119G 
Media].  I would like that entry to read ['119G Media Movies'].  The 
next entry is 15G Media.  For now I would like to call it [15G Media 
'empty primary partition'].  I plan to install Intrepid in that 
partition, when I decide to familiarize myself with that Operating 
System.  Next is 21G Media.  I would like to call it [21G Media 'Hardy 
or Current Operating System'].  I would also like to name the other 
partitions on my computer with identification that describes their basic 
content. (For the same reason - easier for my kids to find what they 
want to know without needing a Linux expert.)

This is a long post, and I will close for now, but I am betting their 
are thousands of Newbies that would like the answers to this one.  It is 
an area that will take Newbie focus off basic stuff we probably should 
know intuitavely, that experts take for granted, and allow us to focus 
on the stuff we really need to know, like the instruction at the 
beginning of this post.  TIA.

For those experts who are offended by the verbosity of my post, I can't 
tell you how long it took me to just press 119G Media (It wasn't a 
matter of lack of curiosity, it was that I was already too confused by 
my every move.  At that point, I wasn't ready to add to the confusion by 
clicking on a new experiment), and to my surprise find something I had 
long looked for, *my movies*. 

I don't even remember the experimenting to find Movies, or even the find 
option in Tools in Dolphin.  I, for one, think 'find' is an important 
enough thing to become a menu Item in Dolphin.  Maybe one for 'locate' 
too.  Those are BIG tools for a Newbie, until they are able to get 
around in the system.  If the long post annoys you, please forgive me.  
I love you all.  I am so grateful to you all.

Steven