In Linux you have various special files in /dev. These files are called devices files. In the Unix world accessing hardware is different. There you have a special file which actually runs a driver which in turn accesses the hardware. The device file is an interface to the actual system component. Files under /dev also behave differently than ordinary files. Below are the most important device files listed. fd0 First Floppy Drive fd1 Second Floppy Drive hda IDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the first IDE port (Master) hdb IDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the first IDE port (Slave) hdc IDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the second IDE port (Master) hdd IDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the second IDE port (Slave) hda1 First partition of the first IDE hard disk hdd15 Fifteenth partition of the fourth IDE hard disk sda SCSI Hard disk with lowest SCSI ID (e.g. 0) sdb SCSI Hard disk with next higher SCSI ID (e.g. 1) sdc SCSI Hard disk with next higher SCSI ID (e.g. 2) sda1 First partition of the first SCSI hard disk sdd10 Tenth partition of the fourth SCSI hard disk sr0 SCSI CD-ROM with the lowest SCSI ID sr1 SCSI CD-ROM with the next higher SCSI ID ttyS0 Serial port 0, COM1 under MS-DOS ttyS1 Serial port 1, COM2 under MS-DOS psaux PS/2 mouse device gpmdata Pseudo device, repeater data from GPM (mouse) daemon cdrom Symbolic link to the CD-ROM drive mouse Symbolic link to the mouse device file null Everything pointed to this device will disappear zero One can endlessly read zeros out of this device The mouse can be used in both the Linux console (with gpm) and the X window environment. The two uses can be made compatible if the gpm repeater is used to allow the signal to flow to the X server as shown: mouse => /dev/psaux => gpm => /dev/gpmdata -> /dev/mouse => X /dev/ttyS0 (repeater) (symlink) /dev/ttyS1 Set the repeater protocol to be raw (in /etc/gpm.conf) while setting X to the original mouse protocol in /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. This approach to use gpm even in X has advantages when the mouse is unplugged inadvertently. Simply restarting gpm with user@debian:# /etc/init.d/gpm restart will re-connect the mouse in software without restarting X. If gpm is disabled or not installed with some reason, make sure to set X to read directly from the mouse device such as /dev/psaux. For details, refer to the 3-Button Mouse mini-Howto at /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/mini/3-Button-Mouse.gz, man gpm, /usr/share/doc/gpm/FAQ.gz, and README.mouse. For PowerPC, in /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, set the mouse device to "/dev/input/mice". Modern kernels give you the capability to emulate a three-button mouse when your mouse only has one button. Just add the following lines to /etc/sysctl.conf file. # 3-button mouse emulation # turn on emulation /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation = 1 # Send middle mouse button signal with the F11 key /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode = 87 # Send right mouse button signal with the F12 key /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode = 88 # For different keys, use showkey to tell you what the code is. The base woody installation on the author's computer required 117MB. The installed size for all standard packages was 123MB, with a download size of 38MB; so 278MB of space was needed to install the base and all standard packages. The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude (a very nice program, by the way) for the tasks listed in tasksel. The system for which the figures were reported already had all standard packages installed. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by adding the numbers up. Task Installed Download Space Needed Size (MB) Size (MB) To Install (MB) desktop environment 345 118 463 X window system 78 36 114 games 49 14 63 Debian Jr. 340 124 464 dialup system 28 8 36 laptop system 3 1 4 scientific applications 110 30 140 C and C++ 32 15 47 Python 103 30 133 Tcl/Tk 37 11 48 fortran 10 4 14 file server 1 - 1 mail server 4 3 7 usenet news server 6 2 8 print server 48 18 66 conventional unix server 55 19 74 web server 4 1 5 TeX/LaTeX environment 171 64 235 simplified Chinese environment 80 29 109 traditional Chinese environment 166 68 234 Cyrillic environment 29 13 42 French environment 60 18 78 German environment 31 9 40 Japanese environment 110 53 163 Korean environment 178 72 250 Polish environment 58 27 85 Russian environment 12 6 18 Spanish environment 15 4 19