Linux in Practice: Files, Directories and Archives — Chapters 7-9

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 03:00:24 +0000

Last week I continued my Linux Essentials revision, working through Chapters 7-9. If the first two weeks were about reconnecting with the system from the outside in, this week was about going back over the things I use daily, files, directories, archives, and actually sitting with the reasoning behind habits I've had for years.
Here's how the week unfolded.
Chapter 7: Revisiting Where Things Belong
I've navigated a filesystem for years, but this chapter asked a question I'd stopped asking a long time ago: why do things live where they live?

Went back over how Linux organises files and directories, and the logic behind that structure
Re-grounded myself in key directories: /home, /etc, /tmp, /usr, /var
Practiced pwd, cd, and ls with intention again, instead of on autopilot
Revisited the difference between absolute and relative paths, properly this time
Reviewed the shortcuts I use without thinking: . (here), .. (one up), ~ (home)
Went back to reading ls -l output closely and spotting hidden files, instead of scrolling past them

Tip: /etc holds configuration, /var is where things change over time, like logs and caches. Revisiting that distinction alone makes troubleshooting someone else's system far less intimidating.
Chapter 8: Re-earning My Respect for rm
This chapter covered commands I already use often, but I made a point of slowing down and sitting with what each one actually does, instead of relying on muscle memory.
Wildcards and globbing first:

*    # matches anything
?    # matches one character
[ ]  # matches a set of characters

Then the fundamentals, revisited properly:

cp       # copy
mv       # move / rename
touch    # create a file
rm       # remove a file
mkdir    # create a directory
rmdir    # remove an empty directory

Tip: rmdir only removes empty directories. A small detail, but it's Linux quietly protecting you from yourself.
Chapter 9: The Revision I'd Been Looking Forward To
Archiving and compression. This chapter finally untangled a distinction I'd been blurring for years without realising it: archiving bundles files together, compression shrinks them. Two different jobs, often performed together, but never quite the same thing.
I also went back over lossless versus lossy compression, lossless preserves every bit, lossy trades some quality for a smaller file size.
I practiced with:

gzip / gunzip     # compress / decompress
tar               # create, list, extract archives
zip / unzip       # work with ZIP files

And the tar options genuinely worth remembering:

-c    # create
-t    # list
-x    # extract
-f    # specify the archive file
-z    # gzip compression
-j    # bzip2 compression
-v    # verbose output

Tip: tar -czvf archive.tar.gz folder/ is essentially the one line worth memorising from this entire chapter.

What This Revision Taught Me

This block of chapters felt different from the first two weeks. Less "what does this word even mean," and more "I already know this, I'm just understanding it properly for the first time." Organising a project folder, archiving it cleanly, navigating a system with purpose rather than habit, it's a reminder that revision isn't just repetition, it's where the real understanding actually settles in.
Chapters 10 and beyond, coming soon.

The Duchess of Hackers
Full-Stack Developer | Digital Marketer | Cybersecurity Enthusiast

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Linux in Practice: Files, Directories and Archives — Chapters 7-9