I’m kinda a newbie to linux (…going on 20 years now, slow learner). I recently came across tldr and don’t know how I lived without it, because man pages can be a little much for a non technical person.

Is there a helpfile / command to learn the purpose of the current root directory you are in? I’ve been reading a few books on Linux at the library, and everything about it kinda fascinates me, and I can’t stop asking questions trying to learn about it…

My current question is what is /etc/skel/ . It’s an empty directory and it has some purpose. Is there a tool to query what the purpose of this directory is? Like whatis . or something like that, for educational purposes; rather than having to web search/“google” it everytime.

  • @c10lEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    The default files for each new user are stored in this directory. Each time a new user is added, these skeleton files are copied into their home directory. An average system would have: .alias, .bash_profile, .bashrc and .cshrc files. Other files are left up to the system administrator

    https://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/etc.html