What are inodes?

It is a file-system used by Linux to make sense to what they are doing in the background.

To us, it is like a folder where we store documents (full of information), and we slap labels on them so that we as humans can find them in the future. Now apply this to the file-system that Linux use :)

From Wikipedia:

"The inode (index node) is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a file-system object such as a file or a directory. Each inode stores the attributes and disk block locations of the object's data.[1] File-system object attributes may include metadata (times of last change,[2] access, modification), as well as owner and permission data.[3]

A directory is a list of inodes with their assigned names. The list includes an entry for itself, its parent, and each of its children."

Credit: Wikipedia (Click here to read moer)