Linux Directory Structure - FHS

Cool Guides @lemmy.ca

Linux File System

135 5

You're viewing a single thread.

200 comments

I don’t get why this sort of picture always gets posted and upvoted when it’s wrong for most distros nowadays.
- Can you recommend one that is correct? I use pop_os (Ubuntu) and Arch. Kinda curious about either one
  
  Not aware of any correct pictures, but I can tell you what's wrong with this one
  /usr: explaining it as "Unix System Resources" is a bit vague
  /bin: /bin is usually a symlink to /usr/bin
  /sbin: /sbin is usually a symlink to /usr/sbin, distros like Fedora are also looking into merging sbin into bin
  /opt: many, I'd say most, "add-on applications" put themselves in bin
  /media: /media is usually a symlink to /run/media, also weird to mention CD-ROMs when flash drives and other forms of storage get mounted here by default
  /mnt: i would disagree about the temporary part, as I mentioned before, stuff like flash drives are usually mounted in /run/media by default
  /root: the root user is usually not enabled on home systems
  /lib: /lib is usually a symlink to /usr/lib
  I would also like the mention that the FHS standard wasn't designed to be elegant, well thought out system. It mainly documents how the filesystem has been traditionally laid out. I forget which folder(s), but once a new folder has been made just because the main hard drive in a developer's system filled up so they created a new folder named something different on a secondary hard drive.
  
  Thanks for this. I'm always confused by the layout and this tend to stick to putting things in the same places, even if they're wrong :)
  
  On my distro(Bazzite), /mnt is only a symlink to /var/mnt. Not sure why, but only found out the other day.
  
  I’m using Silverblue and it also symlinks to /var/mnt. I don’t think it does that on traditional distros, like Fedora 40 Workstation.
  
  I assume it is because /var can be written to while the rest of the filesystem ( outside /home ) is expected to be read-only.
  
  See file-hierarchy(7).
- It seems handy when you're learning about stuff but only when you haven't learned enough to realize it's not correct.

200 comments