Hello Linux people,
I am using the Latest ver. of KDE. 11.2.3.

I am trying to make the switch from windows to Linux. And i find myself here at the KDE forum.
Last night I installed a brand new 80GB HDD. I then proceeded to run Installer from my LIVE CD. It took me through all of the steps of partitioning, formatting, and installing. Prior to running, i had a theory of having a small partition (8GB ) for the Linux OS. And the rest for data and other software. I was hoping to install the OS and be able to Write protect it. Thus isolating it from virus.
However, The installer recommended the standard 3 partition configuration. I'm down with that, so I let it create a 2GB swap partition, an 8GB boot partition, and I had trouble increasing the extended partition to use all available space. So it is a minor bug(design oversight). No biggie. However, My 8GB boot partition is empty. The OS was not installed where I thought it would be. Can anybody recommend how I can get the OS to be installed where I think is should be, in the BOOT partition?
Since it is brand new install I can start from scratch if need be.

Thanks,
Mike

Ok. I did a little more tinkering. It looks like the install went properly. Now I believe the issue is with Dolphin. It does not show the hierarchy of what is really going on. It just throws all folders on your computer into a folder list. Is there a way to make Dolphin show a hierarchy of my file system? Don't shoot me..., but Windows shows your "drives and devices" as the top level in its file manager. Dolphin just throws everything at you as if there is only 1 device on your PC Which is kind of backwards because this is the type of behavior I expect from a MAC OS, not a techie OS like Linux.
Is there a way to make Dolphin show a hierarchy of my file system?

In UNIX based operating systems, all file systems are mounted underneath the Root partition located at "/". The operating system will have been installed here. This includes Mac OS X and Linux.

You will find removable media and other internal partitions present usually under /media or /windows folders.
It is not needed to have a 8GB /boot partition, that is overkill. 250mb would be plenty.
You can find all user files, seperated per username, under /home, which is usually the largest partition.

Linux uses the concept that everything, including hardware and system status is a file. You can get immensely useful information from the /proc file system for instance.

In Linux it is usually not possible ( at least using your distributions package manager ) to install files where you want, this is usually predetermined by the package itself ( usually /usr ) and cannot be changed.

It is not recommended to set up a write protected root file system, since that makes it harder to install new software, which requires root access. All software should be installed from the repositories in your package manager. If using third party repositories they should be recommended by those on your distributions forum.

Users should never use the root account unless absolutely needed ( updates, installing software, configuring hardware ) and it should only be for the distributions administration tools. You should never log in as the root account, since there are no safeguards to prevent you from severely damaging your system and deleting all data.

Keeping everything in the same root is actually a very useful technique. Say you add a new internal hard drive and you want to expand the storage in your user directory. You can mount that hard drive as a folder in your user directory and as far as all of your software is concerned it is just another folder in that directory. You can even mount network drives as though they are part of your computer and your programs don't care. Windows can actually do this too, but it is not the default way it handles devices.

What this means is that the linux OS and all of its software does not care where the data is located physically, it could be on the other side of the world and it wouldn't care (although it would be slow for you). All that matters is where the file is in the filesystem.

As for showing your actual drives. I know the lancelot menu can do that. There may be other tools in KDE as well. But you should only need to do that with removable drives, there is no reason you should have to worry about that with your fixed drives. Just know what role each directory in the filesystem has.

You also really do not have to worry about viruses at this point. Most device drivers require adding kernel modules, so you definitely do not want to make your boot partition read-only. Also, there are security releases made to the kernel occasionally that requires read access. You should be more concerned against malicious software being installed where normal software is installed, such as /usr, /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64, and so on. Not that this is a major concern, either if you stick to trustworthy repositories.

TheBlackCat wrote:

I will look into other tools like lancelot, because it is definitely easier to drill down to the data you are looking for when it is laid out according to a hierarchy. But as far as your comment about LINUX OS and all of its software does not care where the data is physically located is wrong. It most definitely cares. Case in point. I just tried to archive data from my laptop HDD over my network to a USB storage device connected to my linux desktop, and ARK said "no way jose"!!!

bcooksley wrote:In UNIX based operating systems, all file systems are mounted underneath the Root partition located at "/". The operating system will have been installed here. This includes Mac OS X and Linux.

You will find removable media and other internal partitions present usually under /media or /windows folders.
It is not needed to have a 8GB /boot partition, that is overkill. 250mb would be plenty.
You can find all user files, seperated per username, under /home, which is usually the largest partition.

Linux uses the concept that everything, including hardware and system status is a file. You can get immensely useful information from the /proc file system for instance.

In Linux it is usually not possible ( at least using your distributions package manager ) to install files where you want, this is usually predetermined by the package itself ( usually /usr ) and cannot be changed.

It is not recommended to set up a write protected root file system, since that makes it harder to install new software, which requires root access. All software should be installed from the repositories in your package manager. If using third party repositories they should be recommended by those on your distributions forum.

Users should never use the root account unless absolutely needed ( updates, installing software, configuring hardware ) and it should only be for the distributions administration tools. You should never log in as the root account, since there are no safeguards to prevent you from severely damaging your system and deleting all data.

Thanks for the reply. I used 8GB as an over sized estimate. If live cd needs at least 700MB ish, then 250MB is probably too small. but I am not a master configurer so you know of ways to get your linux to run with a small footprint. Heck, even the autoinstaller wanted to reserve 20GB partition by default.

Could you please post your partition table? When you say "boot", I actually think you mean "root" (i.e., /). / definitely needs more space than 250 MB. /boot on the other hands hardly needs any space, and many prefer to not make a separate partition for /boot at all.

The basic partition schema usually looks like this:
/home - personal files
swap - swap
/ - everything else

20 GB for / should be pretty fine (depends on how many applications you want to install etc.).

In most of the cases, you (as a user) only have to worry about your home directory - /home/yourname, (/home/hans in my case). It's so important that it gets its own symbol, ~. Writing 'cd ~/documents' is equal to 'cd /home/yourname/documents' if you're logged in as yourname.

Windows users often want to know exactly where the installed applications end up. Don't worry, I was like that too. But you have to get over it and get used to the *nix way. Why should you care if a particular file is located on a hard drive that you choose to call D? Your files are located in your home directory, and you can learn more about the rest of the system (/etc, /usr etc.) if you want to tinker around with the OS.