Introduction to File Management

At first glance, file management between Windows and Ubuntu seem very similar (in fact, the basics are). GNOME uses a graphical file management tool called Nautilus which can be configured to your preferences (System > Preferences > File Management).

Nautilus can be opened any number of ways in a default Ubuntu installation, all of which will jump you to a specific location in the file structure.

• Applications > Accessories > File Browser: defaults to /home/[logged in user] folder


• Places Menu
  
  
  
  • Home Folder: /home/[logged in user]
  
  
  • Desktop: /home/[logged in user]/Desktop
  
  
  • Bookmark list (more on this in a bit)
  
  
  • Computer: special link which shows all your mounted devices, such as hard drives, floppies, USB, etc.
  
  
  • Mounted hard drive list
  
  
  • Network folders
  
  
  • Search options

Once you have Nautilus open (assuming default preferences), you will see a list on the left side which shows your “Places”. These include your root (File System), mounted drives, and bookmarks. Double clicking on one makes the right side of the window display the contents of your selection. The “Places” menu can also be changed to display other information such as the file structure tree, add notes on the current folder, and show a history of folders you visited in this session. Alternately, the right side of the Nautilus screen, much like Windows Explorer, is where your file contents are listed. By default they are listed in a tree view in a fairly large font (you can change the default size by modifying the zoom level in the preferences), clicking the arrow next to a folder expands the contents showing files and sub-folders, while double clicking the actual folder will open the respective directory as the “root” for the right side. Additionally, double clicking leaves a breadcrumb of buttons at the top of the file browser so you can jump back to the previous folders easily. You can also bookmark the current “root” folder (Bookmarks > Add Bookmark), such as your music directory so you can jump to it easily. Another time saver, if you know the location of the folder you want to jump to, is to use the Location option under the Go menu to specify a target directory. There are many other little features which both work similarly to Windows Explorer and are somewhat unique to Nautilus, so play around for a bit to get accustomed to them.

Program preferences (i.e. GNOME, Gimp, Firefox, Nautilus, etc.) are stored in a directory structure as well. If you look at your home folder (/home/[logged in user name]), and display hidden files from the View menu, you will notice lots of folders starting with a dot. These are where the settings for respective programs are stored. This works basically the same way as Windows’ “Local Settings” folder. Newer Windows programs take advantage of this and store your personal settings in the Local Settings folder, where older programs store them in their installation directory. On the other hand, Linux programs cannot store settings in the install directory, because the program may not have root access to do this. To get around this, a folder is created in the respective user’s home directory where the program will have write access, hence the folders with the dot. Needless to say, backing up this folder with a dot backs up program preferences. For instance, the .mozilla folder stores your Firefox bookmarks and settings.

Nautilus

Moving on to more OS level information, if you are curious where programs are actually installed, here is a brief rundown of locations and what is stored there in a typical Ubuntu install.

All of these locations are searched whenever you enter a command at the command line, so you can launch a program stored in any of the locations above by simply typing its name without the directory, much like the way the Windows path variable works.

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