this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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That's one of the things that semi-experienced Windows users need to wrap their head around, but I strongly disagree that drive letters are somehow inferior to a hierarchical file system structure. I mean, the A:, B:, C: ... convention was originally just intended for the first IBM PC with 1 or 2 floppy drives. It was never intended to support complex storage configurations, whereas the hierarchical file system was designed for Unix systems that had to handle multiple magnetic drives from the start. It is a much more flexible system to organize your file storage.
That's because there is a difference between a block device and a mounted file system. Windows just obscures that difference from you with its archaic drive mapping system.
All your block devices and partitions on your block devices will be in
/devwith a meaningful name. You can list them with thelsblkcommand. If a partition contains a file system that Linux knows how to use, you can mount it anywhere you like.No that's not "convention" at all. Some desktop environments may decide to mount undefined drives there, but there really is no convention, ultimately you mount it where you want it to be mounted.
If your unsure,
df /home/documents/notpornshould tell you exactly what drive it's on, but ultimately it's up to you to know how you've organized your storage.BTW I've said this before, but Linux is probably harder for users who know Windows just well enough to be dangerous than it is for relative beginners, because there are so many concepts and things they take for granted that they have to unlearn.
While it might be suitable for server environments with 400+drives, all home setups will have fewer volumes than there are alphabet letters, so it’s a suitable setup there.
Someone else identified how you can run an extra command to identify actual location of a file, and while that’s useful, it’s an extra step that’s unnecessary when the design of the location string itself also identifies that. Unless you can tell me which drive /home/supra-app/preconfiguration/media is on - without running something different. (Vs windows: C:/Users/Someone/AppData/supra-app/preconfiguration/media) That’s what the design of WWW URLs was for - you never have to ask which domain a website is on, and it can even inform you about whether a site is trustworthy.
I don’t think you’re helping your case by showing there’s no drive location convention at all. A friend plugs a USB device in your computer while you’re busy in the kitchen. He’s fine if he just uses a UI autopopup, but if he needs the full path, he has to ask you where you’ve set up auto-mounting, if you have at all.
The thing is, you are absolutely free to use a
/c,/d,/emounting scheme, but you are not shackled to it like you are in Windows. Personally I like to organize my data in one big root (/) file system on my NVME drive and then/datafor my bulk storage on HDD and/nasfor my NAS shares. I never have any problems knowing where my data is.BTW, I notice all your complaints revolve around "OMG it's different" and "OMG the user can choose to do things differently... so complicated". That is kind of the point of Linux you know?
At some point you just have to accept that it's different and move on, or decide that it's too complicated for you and use something else.
BTW, I wonder why people never make this complaint about Apple devices? It also has a hierarchical file structure without drive letters, after all it is also a Unix variant.
This is really what people should understand, you CAN do all these things in Linux... you can change virtually anything to your liking if you are so inclined. And it's usually a Google search away if you aren't sure how to go about it.