Originally posted by WMBP In my experience (which is fairly considerable in this area), what confuses people who aren't computer savvy is the use of the term "root". Root sounds like it's at the bottom where you can't see it, like the root of the tree. But actually, "root" here means what most people would normally think of as "top", in other words, it's the most visible and easiest to find part of the storage device. The root is the top level of the storage device, whether it's an SD card or a hard disk.
Will
I'll have to dig deep in my 1957 built computer for this, what I can remember is this:
The term root was first used by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie of Bell Laboratories where they developed a computer language called 'C' and a computer operating system (something like windows) called UNIX (which was written in C).
They started to use the term 'root' for all kinds of things: the most powerfull user account is called "root", the memory loaded operating system execution file was the "root" process and they were to create the first upside down tree like filesystem structure (like the windows file system but better; no drive letters. All disks sit in one structure).
The root directory (the most upper) is indicated with a '/' and the '/' was also used as a name seperator in file / directory names.
There have been many, many, many UNIX and UNIX like operating systems using the ideas of Kernighan and Ritchie: Ultrix, BSD, OSF, HP-UX, AIX, Linux, Solaris, etc. etc.
Also realtime variants and the like. Linux was created as a hobby project by Linus Torvalds under a free software license. Linux is now supported by companies like HP and IBM and it does not cost anything, so the guys in Seattle have been nerveous.
Since many hw suppliers now use some sort of Linux kernel (operating system) in their products, the K&R ideas have been wide spread.
Basically all your home wireless routers, TV's, HD recorder, game consoles, etc are all UNIX / Linux basde computer systems. Even the latest Apple OS is UNIX / LINIX based (I believe). You probably own more Linux based systems than Windows, allthough you've never noticed.
Last month my personal entertainment centre in a Boeing 777 crashed, showing me a clear evidence of being a Linux system.
Try to Telnet to your portible harddrive, Wifi equipment, your Blueray drive....
At some point in time there was an OSI standarization initiative defining a common software standard. Also microsoft then thought it was important to follow. Hence many of the K&R ideas were ported into the first Windows NT OS. Unfortunatly the UNIX world was too much scatered and not focused on end user computing. Microsoft immitated the Xerox / PARC windows user interface and by making a deal with IBM became world dominant. Despite the delivery of absolute crap and lack of quality.
What does this has to do with Pentax DSLR's?
Well, they use an K&R like hierarchical filesystem...
- Bert