Files can be stored in many places on a Linux computer other than your home directory, which contains only your desktop files, downloads, documents, and other miscellaneous personal data. To access other data sources on the computer, such as class folders for needed data files, or to access temporary storage space, follow this guide.
- Tap the Windows/super key, often in the lower left of the keyboard. This will bring up the GNOME Activities Overview. Begin typing ‘files’ into the search box and the GNOME File Manager should show up.
- Open GNOME File Manager by clicking on the icon or selecting Enter on your keyboard when the icon is highlighted. By default, this will open to the Home folder.
- Select Other Locations from the left navigation pane.
- This will open a left navigation pane listing all storage volumes available to the computer. Select the Computer option on the top.
- Under the Computer option, all of the files stored locally on the computer are displayed.
- Navigate to the folder or file you want to access by doing one of the following:
- Using the arrow keys and enter on the keyboard to do the same as above.
- Double-clicking on folders to go inside them, or on files to access them.
- Generally, people come here for class data, which is located in the classes folder seen above.
- Scratch space is also found here, which is storage that automatically wipes every 30 days. It is located in the folder named scratch_30_day_tmp. See the article Temporary Scratch Space on a Linux Machine for more information about Linux scratch space.
- Note that not all files in these directories are accessible to everyone, such as teaching materials only being available to the users who created them.
- Directories or files which you do not have access to will have an X in the icon.
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