Creating New Folders

If you aren't already running Nautilus, start it up now and make sure you are in your personal home directory. In the main Nautilus window, right-click any blank area and look at the menu that pops up. Click the first item on that menu, conveniently labeled Create Folder. Of course, this is a refresher of what I told you earlier in the chapter, but instead of your desktop, this is happening inside the main Nautilus window. An Untitled Folder appears waiting for you to give it a more appropriate name. This folder can be pretty much anything you like. If this directory will house your music files, perhaps its name should be Music.

Tip

Cool trick time. Earlier I had you create a folder on the desktop, then look at the Desktop folder in Nautilus. Why not double-click on the Desktop folder in Nautilus, create a folder, then go back and look at your desktop?

Just remember that you can create folders inside other folders, and you can start organizing things in a way that makes sense. For instance, you might want to create folders called Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop, and Classical in your Music folder.

"I've Changed My Mind" (a.k.a. Renaming Files)

You created a folder called Classical, and you really meant Opera. To rename a file or directory, select it, right-click to get the menu, and then choose Rename. The name is highlighted under the appropriate iconjust type the new name and press <Enter>. Alternatively, select it and choose Rename from the Edit menu in the menu bar. The easiest way of all is to press <F2> after you have selected the file or directory.

Shell Out

Open a terminal shell and type ls to see your directories. Renaming a file or directory from the shell is easy using the mv command. Why move to rename? Because renaming involves copying to a new location first, then deleting the old file. Type mv oldname newname and press <Enter>. For instance, to change your Classical directory to Opera, you would type the following command:

mv Classical Opera