I'm using a Linux mint system.
All I want to do is plug in and use a flashdrive.
I was given these commands :
$ sudo fdisk -1 ( told Invalid )
$ sudo mkdir ( told an operant was needed )
I guessed on first command and changed -1 to -l. It worked!
Are the -whatevers the operants?
As you may surmise I know very little about Linux.
Cannot say at the moment I'm that pleased with it. I mean , all this typing just to use a flashdrive ?
Hopefully , your group may bring me around to the joys of Linux.
- oh , where will I find your response ? somewhere on this site or
do you e-mail me ?
thanks

I've never used Mint, so if this information is wrong, I apologize. Often when a USB device is plugged in, it will be detected but not mounted. It may show up on the desktop. If it does, right click the icon for it and select "mount the device" or "open" or something similar. That's the easy way to get the job done.

If that doesn't work, you will have to do it the hard way, via typing in commands manually, as you were describing.
is used to display partition information. If you do not specify a device then it will report the info of the main hard drive, and will not give you the info you need for mounting the USB. The device you are looking for would be something like /dev/usb0 or similar. Without being familiar with your setup, I don't know exactly which item you are looking for, but it will probably be found somewhere in the /dev directory.

As for 'mkdir', that probably isn't necessary. If you have a directory called /media or a directory called /mnt those are usually reserved for mounting devices. You can make a new directory with 'mkdir' if you want, though. It wouldn't hurt anything.

Once you know the device, the file type (all? flashdrives are of type fat32), and the mount point, then you could issue your mount command.
After mounted, it could then be accessed in the /media directory. Please note these are very general instructions and will not be exactly what you need to type in for this to work. If you need more details, someone who has experience with Mint will have to help you.

As for loving or hating Linux, I'm glad I stuck with it. There is a learning curve, but in my opinion, it's rewarding.

$ sudo mkdir

this command is to make a directory in the current working directory, you would need a name for the new directory (folder) after the command mkdir, for example:

[erik@topaz ~]$ mkdir testdir


BUT, this has nothing to do with mounting a USB drive...

You need first to 'mount' your device to some directory at your disk.

If you don't know file system of you disk then simply use:
And remember, you are not mounting whole device just a partition. So for example 'sdb1' not 'sdb'.

To check how is your device called on your system you can use 'lsblk' command. Usually devices are mounted to 'mnt' directory. There you can create a directory for mounting point. If for example you are mounting sdb1, just write this command to create a directory for it:

I hope it helps .