The purpose of the page is to give the Linux 'newbie' suggestions on how to 'get around' in Linux.

Absolute and relative paths
In Linux path names may be relative or absolute, and file names may contain any character other than slash. The file names . and .. are special and refer to the current directory and the parent of the current directory respectively. Multiple adjacent slash characters are interpreted as a single separator. The following examples illustrate various forms of path names:

Command	Description
/	Absolute path to the root directory
/etc/passwd	Absolute path to the file named passwd in the directory etc in the root directory
.	Relative path to the current directory
foo	Relative path to the file foo in the current directory
foo/bar	Relative path to the file bar in the directory foo in the current directory
../foo	Relative path to the file foo in the directory above the current directory

Meaning of . and .. in Linux
The file names:
. refers to the current directory, and
.. refers to the parent of the current directory

What happens with the commands cd ..? cd .?

Difference between / , ~, /root , and /home/smithjane?
/ is the root directory
/home/smithjane is the home directory of the user 'smithjane'
~ is an abbreviation for the user's home directory
/root is the home directory of the root user