Glossary of technical terms used in the documentation

Drive

A drive is a device that stores non volatile data, meaning that the data is not
erased when the power is turned off. Examples: hard disks, SSD, USB sticks, SD
cards readers, eMMC.

The media storing the data can be permanently attached to the drive or removable
like SD cards, USB sticks and drives connected through USB.

An operating system installed in a removable media or an external drive is said
portable: it can be moved from a computer to another one.

Encryption

Encryption is the process of converting data to an unrecognizable ("encrypted")
form. It is commonly used to protect sensitive information so that only
authorized persons can view it. A single file or directory, a partition as well
as a whole drive can be encrypted, which make it accessible only after having
typed a small text called a passphrase, kept secret.

Partition

A partition is a section of a storage media, such as a hard disk or SSD.  It is
treated by the operating system as a separate logical volume, which makes it
function similar to a separate media.

Partition table

A partition table is the permanent structure recording how information is laid
out on a media, mainly recording the beginning and end of each partition on
the media.

The most common types of partition tables are the DOS partition table, initially
used by the MS-DOS operating system, and the GUID Partition Table or GPT, which
allows to handle more partitions and larger drives.

Directory

A directory is another name for a folder. File systems use directories to
organize files within partitions.

Directories can contain files and also other directories. The resulting
structure can be represented as an upside-down tree. The top-level directory of
a drive is named the root directory.  In Linux the character / separates the
levels of the tree. / alone represents the root directory, /home hosts the files
belonging to users, /home/didier hosts the files belonging to user didier.
/root hosts the files of the user named root (the system's administrator).
Note: 'root' can refer to the top-level directory or the system's administrator.

Boot

Boot means switch-on a computer to start an operating system. Several operating
systems can be installed in the same computer. Select which one to load into
RAM and run can be done either by the firmware or by a software named boot
manager (GRUB in Slint's case). Starting the OS can be done two ways or modes:
In the Legacy or BIOS mode the OS is loaded executing the instructions written
in a boot sector.  In the EFI mode the OS loader is a program stored in an
executable file, located in a directory of an EFI System partition (ESP).
The firmware of a computer can support one of these modes, or both.  In the
future the EFI mode will completely supersede the Legacy mode.

Firmware

A firmware is a software that initializes and checks the hardware, then either
selects and load in RAM the operating system, or starts a software called a
boot manager that will do that. The firmware is held in non-volatile memory
devices such as ROM, EPROM, or flash memory. It is the first software run when
booting a computer. It provides a menu allowing to configure the hardware and
select in which mode (Legacy or EFI) to boot, and in which order look for the
operating system or other application (like the GRUB boot manager) to run.

RAM

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. This kind of device stores volatile data,
meaning that the data is erased when the power is turned off.

SWAP

A swap space is used to tentatively store data previously in RAM on a device
like a hard disk or SSD, either because else the RAM would become full, or to
free space in RAM to store there most frequently used data. The swap space can
be a partition on a drive of type 'Linux swap' or a regular file stored in an
an existing partition. There is also the 'swap in zram': in this case the data
is stored in RAM but in compressed form, to its usable size of the RAM.  

File system

A file system is a software that manages the files and directories in a
partition. It memorizes the location in the physical media of the data
contained in the files, allowing to read or writing them. Examples of commonly
used file systems are vfat, ntfs, ext4, f2fs. This command lists all file
systems allowing to read data contained in a partition from Linux:
cat /proc/filesystems|grep -v nodev