I am a student currently attending a Linux operating class and my teacher gave us an assignment to ask a question to the forums here about Linux. I’m just wondering as someone who is highly familiar with the files of Windows, is there any major differences that Linux files use compared of that of Windows? Like is the file configuration different or similar to Windows? And is there anything important I need to know about the configuration files? I am someone who has never used Linux before until now and I just want to make sure that I am getting all the info that I need.
one big, and quite obvious difference is the directory paths, windows uses drive letters eg c: d: etc, in linux, everything starts from / additional drives start from wherever you choose to mount them in the filesystem, eg /mnt/drive2/ another one is for filepaths, windows uses \ and linux uses / eg c:\windows\system or /usr/local/bin windows doesn't care if a file is Name.Ext, name.ext or NAME.EXT would all be seen as the same file so you'd only ever have one of them, if you tried to create more, they would become Name(1).ext, name(2).ext etc , linux is case sensitive, they would all be completely separate files, with the given upper/lower case lettering, if you tried to create a new file and save it as eg name.ext it would overwrite the existing one. in linux, all the OS/software configuration are in readable files. you can read most of them as any normal user (a small number of very secure files are root/owner readable only), and edit (if you have (sudo/root) permission) all of them easily. in windows, the configuration could be part of the unreadable executable file, a .txt file, a .cfg file a .sys file, or hidden away in a seemingly random point in the registry.
