The ls -al command is a combination of ls -l (use a long listing format) and ls -a (do not ignore entries starting with .)

The result is a long list (the ls -l part) with (from left to right):

• filetype


• file permissions


• number of links


• owner name


• owner group


• file size


• time of last modification


• the name of the file or directory

while the ls -a means that hidden files are listed as well.

see also man ls (as always man is the first source of information), and this link.

A little more explanation on what you see

The output starts with the number of disc blocks, used by the directory (in your case 76). From the GNU docs:

For each directory that is listed, preface the files with a line
‘total blocks’, where blocks is the total disk allocation for all
files in that directory. The block size currently defaults to 1024
bytes, but this can be overridden.

Then:

• the first character describes wether it is a directory (d) or a file (-) (or some other file type, see the docs for a complete listing)

File permissions:

• the permissions in a nine-character section (3x3 for owner / group / other users)

Links

• The number of links is the number of hard links to the file. For a directory, the number of hard links is the number of (immediate) subdirectories plus the parent directory and itself.

Owner

• name of the owner


• name of the (owner) group

File size

• You see many files with the size of 4096, which is the minimum size for a directory on ext3 and ext4.