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Understanding the Linux 
filesystem layout
As I mentioned earlier, every directory in a Linux installation has a designated 
purpose. It isn't a hard rule that you have to follow, more of a strong 
recommendation for where certain things are supposed to go.

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Chapter 4
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You can certainly go against the recommendations; ultimately, you have full control 
over your installation. But, if you make it a habit to place files in strange locations, 
you may annoy your colleagues. In this section, we'll go over the most common 
directories and talk about their purpose.
The term 
filesystem
 itself can be somewhat confusing in the Linux world because it 
can refer to two different things—the default directory structure, as well as the actual 
filesystem we choose when formatting a volume such as a hard drive or flash drive 
(ext4, XFS, and so on). Specific to this section, we're going to take a quick look at the 
Linux filesystem in the context of the default directory structure.
In Linux (Ubuntu uses the Linux kernel and related utilities, so therefore it is a 
distribution
 of Linux), the filesystem begins with a single forward slash, 
/
. This is 
considered the beginning of the filesystem, and directories and sub-directories 
branch out from there. For example, consider the 
/home
 directory. This directory 
exists at the root level of the filesystem, which you can see from the fact that it begins 
with a forward slash. My home directory on my system is 
/home/jay
, which means 
that it's the 
jay
 directory, which is inside the 
home
 directory, and that directory is at 
the beginning of the filesystem.
This is confusing at first, but becomes very logical once you become accustomed 
to it. If you're familiar with Microsoft Windows, then you can technically think 
of 
/
 as the C: drive. It's actually a bit more complex than that, but if we forego 
some of the quirks, that comparison works. To really bring this home, use the 
ls
 
command against several directories on your server. If you execute 
ls /
, you will 
see all of the directories at the root of the filesystem. You'll see the 
home
 directory 
among the results, among many others. For those of you who prefer a more visual 
representation, the following screenshot shows an example filesystem:
Figure 4.5: Diagram of a portion of a typical Linux filesystem

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Navigating and Essential Commands