How do I browse my file system on a mac?

I am trying to browse the file system on a mac yosemite mac book air. I am coming from a Windows and Linux background, so I am used to just firing up an explorer window and being able to navigate everything.

In mac finder, all I get is a favourites window which has a bunch of stuff that is not my hard drives entire file system, and I have a devices tab that has "remote disk" which is empty.

Is there a way I can browse the entire file system through a GUI?

Solution 1:

Go to Finder > Preferences and under "Show these items on desktop " select "Hard Disks".

Select your drive from the desktop and you can browse the files.

You can also Finder > Go > Computer to browse the files.