Windows divides data into multiple drives (C:, D:, etc.), Linux follows a structured, single-rooter system.

Root directory (/)

It contains all essential system directories, configuration files, and user data.

Everything in Linux is a file, whether it’s a text document, a directory, a hardware device, or a running process.

• /bin – stands for binaries

This directory stores essential system executables required for basic operations. Few commands examples are:-

ls, cp, mv, grep, cat, echo, rm

• /sbin – stands for system binaries

Here all administrative commands reside for system management and available only for root privileges. Few examples are:-

shutdown, reboot, fsck, fdisk, iptables, mkfs

• /etc – your configuration files

If you ever prepare a nginx server or apache then you know this area as the configurations are done here. All system-wide configuration files and scripts live here. If you want to modifiy files here it required administrative privileges. Few examples are:-

/etc/fstab – defines file system mount point

/etc/passwd – stores user account information

• /home – User Home directory

Put your personal files here and its for each user — each user gets their own space: /home/{username}/

This directory contains:-

Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos, .bashrc (custom shell configurations)

• /root – Root user’s Home Directory

Your superuser (root) home directory. It provides a secure workspace, separate from standard user directories.

NEVER, I said never use root for daily tasks! I already feel bad after not listening to this warning in my college days in year 2013.

• /var – variable data

Confused! No worries. This directory mainly stores your frequently changing files, such as logs, database and cache.

• /tmp – temporary files

Stores temporary files created by your running applications and the system. And often cleared out automatically on reboot. So, don’t put any important file here.

• /usr – user applications and libraries

It is quite a big place for system-wide, read-only files. All your software installed via system repository package goes here.

/usr/bin/ – Common user apps (e.g., vim, nano, wget, apt)

/usr/sbin/ – System admin binaries (e.g, ipconfig)

/usr/local/ – Manually installed software by user

• /lib & /lib64 – System Libraries

This directory holds shared libraries (.so files) required by binaries in /bin and /sbin

• /opt – Optional Software

You want to install commercial apps like Google Chrome, Oracle Java, etc., everything goes here (for 3rd party software)

• /mnt & /media – Mount Points

Inject your pen drive, CDs or SD cards and you will see mounted devices here.

• /dev – Device files

Special files representing hardware devices

• /proc & /sys – Kernel and Process Information

/proc/ few examples are:-

/proc/cpuinfo – system CPU details

/proc/meminfo – system memory usage

/sys/ – exposes kernel and hardware configurations.

• /run – Runtime Data

stores volatile runtime data that is created by the system while it is running. Content disappear after reboot.

• /srv – Service Data

This directory contains data served by system services. You can think of this place where server applications store the data they provide to clients.

• /lost+found – Recovered Files

Used by the fsck utility for recovering lost files and appears in each partition with a Linux filesystem.