@1: doing work in textmode is much faster than in a GUI if you are used to it, for example: you want to copy a file from folder A to folder B, doing this on the desktop means to browse to folder A, rightclick the file, copy it, browse to folder B, rightclick, paste it.
in textmode it's just 1 command:
Code: Select all
cp /path/to/file /path/to/destination
ok, in Windows OSs working in textmode (or a shell or terminal) is much less fun, simply because of the limited possibilities.
this is much different on Linux/Unix, because there you can do everything you can do in a GUI in textmode too (the GUIs are usually just interfaces to the textmode application anyway) and even more.
here is a quick command overview of *nix systems:
http://www.ss64.com/bash/
and here for Windows:
http://www.ss64.com/nt/
@2: there are 2 definitions of what the root directory is:
- it's either the home directory of the root user (admin): /root
- or (and this is what is usually meant) it's the system root directory: /
the system root is simply the "root" of all other directories, imagine it like a tree. on Windows systems there is no root directory.
