windows-linux-hosting2All those who have been using Windows since Long and want to try linux then you should prepare yourself before facing Linux. Here I have tried to list out some similaritites as well Differences among the two operating systems which will be helpful to when you start with Linux. Here my aim was not to determine which OS is better but to make you aware about the new things which you might not be aware of Linux and might be confusing for you at first but as the time will pass all the things will be clear and you will get familiar with all these terms used in this post.

There is no registry in Linux

In windows there is the registry, the registry is a database which keeps all your settings. If you want to change anything not in a menu (or in a menu) you need to use the regedit program Or a script.

In Linux there is no such thing as a registry.

In Linux everything is a file

All configurations are in text files, and everything in Linux is treated as a file. This is a much simpler approach which makes it very easy to change things in Linux. In Linux even your filesystem itself can be viewed as a file.

In Linux there’s no such thing as drive letters

In Linux all your “drives” are on the same tree, this means that instead of navigating to a drive letter you always navigate to a subdirectory.

Important thing about Linux is that you can mount the Windows Drives on your Linux but the reverse is not possible. To mount a Windows Partition onto Linux you may follow this tutorial.

You should see the command line as the registry editor

If you perceive the command line stuff in Linux which we call “shell” in the open source Language as a difficult thing to cope with, remember the following.

The Shell makes it possible to do everything (and a whole lot more) for which you would need to use regedit for in windows.For example In windows you cannot use the command line to change your garbage bin icon. You need regedit to do such a thing in windows.

Still the shell is capable of doing a lot more things then what regedit in windows can do.

If you are used to windows command line, there are some differences

The slash is the other way: in linux / is used in representing the path instead of \ used in Windows. For example the path in Linux will /usr/bin/ls . You might be thinking about the which drive does it signify. Well as I said earlier there is no drives in Linux there is only a Single Root and it represented by ‘/’ and the rest part of the path represent the path to the file ls.

Get used to tab completion

Similar to Windows Command Line,  you may use the tab for auto completion in Shell. If you type the first few letters of a command and then tab it will try to fill in the rest. This works equally well with file name.

‘man’ is for Manual

If you need to know how to use a command, type man [commandname] on the command line. Try man man to get the man(ual) of how you can use man.

Find yourself a package manager

Package managers are programs which install software, almost every software you use in windows is available in Linux for free, with a package manager you can list and search through available software and install program for free. If your not used to Linux and coming from windows, package managers are your life saver.

There’s no such thing as .exe

In Linux there’s no such thing as .exe files. If something is executable it has it’s executable bit set. You can find executables with ls -F this will show an asterisk * on every executable file. use man ls to find more listing options.

Execute programs in the current directory with ./programname

Starting a program which is in the current directory is done by prefixing it with a ./ so the shell will start looking in the current directory.