Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

This topic assumes you are using one of the recommended distro's or remasters.

File management is the most common task that a computer user does. We are constantly working with text files, spreadsheets, PDF’s, image files, pictures, audio files, video files and more. Knowing where they are and keeping them organized makes your computing easier.

To begin, Linux file and directory names are case sensitive. In MS Windows, two files named myfile.txt and Myfile.txt are seen by Windows as the same file and could not be in the same folder.
Linux sees those same two files as different files and they could be in the same folder.

A general note about naming files/directories/folders in either Linux or MS Windows is names should not contain blank spaces. Instead, use a dash or underline character as a separator, i.e, my-file.txt .

Remember, in Puppy, you are the Root user, so generally speaking all your personal files would be in the /root directory or one of its sub directories like my-documents or Downloads. The /root directory is also referred to as the “home” directory. To make things a little confusing “home” can also refer to the /mnt/home directory which is in the top level directory (/) of the Puppy boot partition.

Every thing in /root (your home directory) will be stored in your save file or folder. If you are using a save folder you can put as much as you want there because a save folder will automatically grow as needed.

Save files are a fixed size and can fill up, but You CAN resize them (Menu>Utility>Resize personal storage file). You can also help keep your save file smaller by moving your documents, downloads, etc.. Make a directory in /mnt/home and put them there.

The default file manager is named Rox. Hovering your mouse over the icons in the Rox toolbar will show their functions. The “house“ icon takes you to the /root directory (users home directory).

Additionally, right clicking in an empty window space will bring up an action menu.
Right clicking on a file or directory icon will bring up action menus for them.

Copy, Move, And Linking (remember links are like shortcuts)
The easiest way to do these operations is to open two Rox windows.

Then drag and drop the files/directories you want to copy, move or link from the source window into the destination window.

When you drop the files/directories a menu will open and you can choose the action you want.

If you are making a link, relative links can be used for almost everything. If an icon is a link it will have a small black arrow in its top left corner.

NOTE: you can select multiple files/directories by holding down the Ctrl key and then clicking them.

Handy Features

Bookmarks – if you have directories you use a lot, you can make bookmarks to them.

• navigate to the directory you use

• click the bookmark icon in the toolbar (third from left side)

• click Add New Bookmark

Goto (search) – press the slash key (/) and a Goto line will open on the bottom of the Rox window. Start typing the name of the file/directory you want and Rox will jump to it.

Need more help? Join the forum and post your questions in Beginners Help.