2

I wanted to know the difference between root and home directories. How do I reallocate some more space to for faster functioning of the Virtualbox, the other OS that I have is Windows XP ? Thank you!

0

1 Answer 1

5

What are the different types of directories do we have?

All directories are the same. There are no "types" of directories.

In general:

Linux does use permissions for owner, groups and others to decide if someone can see, edit/delete/write and, or execute. "root" is such a user. So is your account (admin through sudo) and any normal account on your system;if any.

"/home/user/" ("user" will be a name on your system) directories are owned by "user" and a user can do almost anything inside that location. Outside "/home/user/" what that user can do depends on the permissions of that location. Most of the system will be owned by "root" and thus inaccessible for none admin users, and only accessible to an admin user using "sudo". If for instance a user wants to use an external disk the admin needs to grant the permissions for that user use be able to use it.

How do I reallocate some more space to for faster functioning of the Virtualbox,

"space" and "faster" are 2 different things.

  1. you add more "space" to a virtual machine by editing the virtual machine and to increase the space it can use. This is "space" you can use for storing files. That does NOT make your VM quicker.
  2. "faster" is related to RAM. If you need your VM to be quicker responding increase the amount of RAM, vRAM and/or CPUs. Here is a video explaining how to add RAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLuIVGNfM4w
7
  • Thank you for your comments! I have dual OS system installed on my system. I want to reallocate some more space to the drive that Ubuntu OS is installed so that it works better? Isnt it the same way Windows works, we allocate more space to the C Drive to run more programs. Dec 27, 2014 at 14:33
  • Naah. More space does not make the OS run better. You can install more software sure. Mind 1 thing: you mention a VM in the question. A dual boot is something different and getting more space to Ubuntu from Windows would have a different answer.
    – Rinzwind
    Dec 27, 2014 at 14:40
  • Sure , I will put this as a different question :) Dec 27, 2014 at 15:34
  • Thank you for your answer on the directories, I would still want to know why are different permission given to root and home?Is there a particular reason for specifically using sudo to access root directories?I can access my external HDD and the system does not ask for any permission, is it because it is already preconfigured? Dec 27, 2014 at 15:41
  • @SudiptaBanerjee security. We desktop users tend to have 1 user but Linux is a multi-user system. So just like a 2nd user has nothing to do in your home so does a normal user have nothing to do in the filesystem.
    – Rinzwind
    Dec 27, 2014 at 15:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .