Question

Explain the purpose of a linked file and how these files are commonly used on a Linux system

Answer 1

Answer:

If you are new to Linux, or have used it for a few months, then you must have heard or read statements such as “In Linux, everything is a File”.

Explanation:

That is in fact true although it is just a generalization concept, in Unix and its derivatives such as Linux, everything is considered as a file. If something is not a file, then it must be running as a process on the system.

To understand this, take for example the amount of space on your root (/) directory is always consumed by different types of Linux files. When you create a file or transfer a file to your system, it occupies some space on the physical disk and it is considered to be in a specific format (file type).

And also the Linux system does not differentiate between files and directories, but directories do one important job, that is store other files in groups in a hierarchy for easy location. All your hardware components are represented as files and the system communicates with them using these files.

The idea is an important description of a great property of Linux, where input/output resources such as your documents, directories (folders in Mac OS X and Windows), keyboard, monitor, hard-drives, removable media, printers, modems, virtual terminals and also inter-process and network communication are streams of bytes defined by file system space.

A notable advantage of everything being a file is that the same set of Linux tools, utilities and APIs can be used on the above input/output resources.

Although everything in Linux is a file, there are certain special files that are more than just a file for example sockets and named pipes.