5. Directories Linux keeps files in a single hierarchical directory structure, that (behind the scenes) is made up of a combination of hard drives, CD-ROMs, floppy disks, ZIP drives, etc.
The typical Linux filesystem looks like this:
/ |- bin Essential programs (or binaries) |- boot Startup (or boot) information |- dev Devices |- etc Configuration files |- home Users' home directories | |- user1 | |- user2 | |- user3 | |- lib System libraries and other various program files |- lost+found Files recovered after filesystem checks |- mnt Mount point for removable disks | |- cdrom (An alternative is /cdrom and /floppy) | |- floppy | |- proc A special directory with file-based system information |- root Home directory for the root user |- sbin Essential system programs |- tmp Temporary work space |- usr | |- X11R6 X-Windows files | | |- bin X-Windows programs | | |- include | | |- lib | | |- man | | |- share | | | |- bin General programs | |- dict Dictionary | |- doc Documentation | | | |- etc Additional configuration files | |- include Include files for the C preprocessor | |- info GNU info files | |- lib Additional libraries | |- local Files generally not supplied by the distribution | | |- bin | | |- doc | | |- etc | | |- include | | |- lib | | |- man | | |- sbin | | |- share | | | |- man Man (ie. user manual) pages | |- share Files that can be shared between computers of different architectures | |- sbin Additional system programs | |- src Source code directories (eg. /usr/src/linux/) | |- var |- lock Lock files |- log Log files (system messages, error logs, etc.) |- spool Spool files |- mail Users' mailbox files