Before we go any further, enter:

startx

...to take a quick look at the Linux GUI. With that bit of burning curiosity out of your system, we can continue with the lessons.

Linux's Graphical User Interface (GUI), a.k.a. "That thing that looks like Windows".

That thing that looks like DOS. When you're in X you can open terminal windows to enter commands just as if you were at a (text-based) terminal. Funnily enough, we call these Xterm windows.

Drive letters don't exist in Linux. There is no A:, C:, or D:, only the root (/) directory.

To view the contents of your root directory, enter:

ls /

Here's what's displayed:

bin   dev  home  lost+found  opt   root  tmp  var
boot  etc  lib   mnt         proc  sbin  usr

These 15 directories - all contained within your root directory - are what makes up your entire Linux installation.

Contained in the root directory is a subdirectory called home. And inside the home directory, there is now a directory with the same name as the user account you've just created e.g. /home/john (referred to as, 'John's home directory'). It's in this directory that all his work and local configuration files are stored. These local configuration files are an important aspect of Linux, and will be dealt with later.

Linux features 'global' and 'local' configuration files. Global configuration files affect all accounts, whilst local configuration files affect only the one user. Local changes override global changes.