Linux - Understanding the file system

By default, you are in the home directory, which is like a personal workspace for the user you’re logged in as.

Let’s venture outside of our home into the root of the file system by running cd/. If you hit ls here, you’ll find a bunch of critical directories that you need to know about.

boot, contains the Linux kernel itself.

dev contains external devices like hard drives.

etc contains config files.

var contains log files.

The most interesting directory here though is bin, which holds your binaries. And sbin for system binaries.

When you run a command like ls, Linux looks for an executable binary on your system to execute. The thing is, binaries not only live here, but also under /usr system resources directory, and potentially anywhere you want on the file system.

See Path