This is on a Linux mint box. I'm told everywhere to use the command

cd ~

To switch to the root directory before doing some command line magic. For some reason though, it dumps me in a directory named ~ where ls gives nothing and I can't get back to my home directory; I have to restart the terminal session to get out of the empty root directory. I'm positive that everything is just hidden to me, but even as a super-user I can't get the folders to show themselves. I usually just fall back to using a graphical file browser to roam those forbidden files, but I've recently just been shut out of my root directory, and the machine refuses to allow me to change the permissions on the stupid thing even when I type the root password in. It may just be some over-rigorous end-user shielding on the part of the mint team, but it's getting to be really frustrating now.