After reading an article on tomshardware about installing nvidia drivers,
I tried typing in some of the commands he used to see some of the info
about my system. I'm using Mandrake 8.1 and the tomshardware how-to
was a version of SuSE.

I logged into the root console and typed /etc/inittab
Response bash: /etc/inittab: Permission denied
Then I typed /usr/include/linux
Response no such file or directory
Then I typed /usr/src/linux
Response no such file or directory

Is this happening because the commands do different things in different
distros?

The /etc command was supposed to show me a list of initdefault
commands on start up.

The /usr command was supposed to show me the autoconfig.h files.

Any ideas as to why I was denied permission when logged in as root or
why the other commands brought back "no such file" responses?

those are directories.. you can't just type /etc
its not a command.

if you want to view files, you can do a
cat /etc/inittab
to browse thru directories you would use the cd command. ls to list the files within the directory.

So how do you know when a command is a command and not just
part of a command?

Hi,
To know when a command is a command, you need to learn them first. I'd try to get a tutorial on basic commands for Linux. There are lots on the Web. If you already know some, say cd, you can type man cd and Linux will display the online man(ual) for that command and the options to use.

Good luck!

Hey, I know what cd means. Change directory!

I have looked at some of the mans for unix commands, but they still seem
fragmented to me, so it's hard to put the pieces together.

So, does it have to be man cd, or can it be cd man, too?

Thanks for the tip.

When you are going to consult the man pages for any command, you must type man first, if you were to type, as you are asking, cd man you are telling Linux to change directory to a directory named man. So, always place man [command] to view man pages.

they even have a howto on the man pages.. just man man to view it...
but yeah, you have to know a little more about the commands, then it just comes natural to you and you can usually tell what is a command, a file, a script, and executable... and so on.. once you get to know your system.

most of the commands are located in /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/X11/bin /usr/local/X11/bin(Depending on Distro). Or to find out which directories have commands avalable to you type echo $PATH and the results will show a list of directories where the commands are located. Just cd to one of the directories, do a ls, and if you want to know more about the commands listed, type man <command>.

If you have time I would do man for all the commands just to see what they do.

There's a pretty decent help file on commands here

oh hey! a question
text-mode (command line..) gets kinda colorful. different colors for dirs and executables etc.
where can you change it?