Newbie

General Discussion
1

Hi all, I’m new to the world of Linux, but am keen to get stuck in.

My question is, I installed Zorin OS 7 on my laptop, and Mint 15 Cinnamon to see which of these I liked more. (Zorin is winning at the minute - it seems more stable). They are on there own partitions. All i wanted to do was use the gui to create a new folder in the root directory, but the option was greyed out on the context menu. Why was this? I know Linux works differently to Windows as everything is a file and to access anything you have to mount it…and so on. But I was just wondering if there was a simple explanation for this, like me not having root access or the root being protected/restricted…or whatever. I believe that I can create a new folder using the terminal, but my better half is learning to use Linux as well but I think the terminal and all of it’s commands would blow her mind.

If there is a good beginners book anyone knows of, please feel free to point me to it. I wanted to know how to share files between users as well but I’ll save that for another time - unless it’s simply right-click > Share (guess i should have tried this one first…haha).

Anyway, sorry for rambling on. Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

2

OK, when you open the file manager in the normal way you only have permission to write to your home folder (/home/)

If you want permission to write to anywhere else, you’ll need to open the file manager “as root” … which means with root permissions.

I’m not familiar with Zorin, but there’s usually an option in the file manager toolbar somewhere to “open as root” … failing that, open the filemanager from a terminal with:

gksudo nautilus

(replace the word “nautilus” with whatever the filemanager is called if it’s not nautilus)

that will open the file manager with root permission.

BE AWARE … ONLY do this when it’s 100% necessary :wink:

[EDIT]

See here for some free books/tutorials (though they may be a little dated, 99% should still apply):
http://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?topic=232.0

3

Thanks for the reply Mark, i’ll check out the links.

4

You’re welcome :slight_smile: