"At any given time, a Linux machine will be having 10's and 1000's of files including both system as well as user files. File systems like ext2 or ext3 support file names of 255 characters length and can grow in sizes of up to 2 GB. Now managing these files and keeping track of which files contain what data could be a nightmare for any OS. To overcome this logistical nightmare, Linux uses what are called i-nodes to organise block allocations to files.
"Each file in Linux irrespective of its type, has a unique identity by way of an i-node number associated with it. No two different files can have the same i-node number..."
