| /bin | This is where the system stores important executables, needed for the startup of the system. |
| /boot | The kernel is often placed here, together with some other boot files, this directory should be on the first 1024 cylinders of the disk, or the disk should be LBA translated, otherwise LILO can't boot the kernel. |
| /cdrom | This is a directory I have, as a mount point for my CDROM reader. |
| /dev | This is a really interesting directory :). In there, every device on your computer (serial ports, hard disks etc..) has a file, a device file. When you write to the file /dev/ttyS0, the kernel takes care of what you write, and write it to the first serial port of the system. This is a very nice system, since everything in the system can be treated as files. |
| /dosc | This is a common name for your DOS C:. On every system I've seen, the DOS primary partition has been mounted as /dosc. Don't ask me why ! |
| /etc | Global configuration files, often has some subdirs, like /etc/ppp for your dialup PPP internet configuration. |
| /floppy | My mount point for floppydisks. |
| /home | Users's home directories, every user has a directory in this directory. |
| /lib | Shared libraries, important for the system startup. Share libraries are used by many executables at the same time, saving memory and diskspace. |
| /lost+found | If you run a fsck, and it finds some weirdness, the result goes here. |
| /mnt | This is another non-standard, but common directory. It exist there for temporary mounts, ie if you want to mount some partition you normally not mount, you can mount it here.. Well, that's at least how I use it. |
| /proc | This is a really important directory. It exists only as a mount point on the harddisk, the rest is virtual information filled in by the kernel. Here you find information about all your processes, and other information such as which interupts and memory adresses are in use. An easy way to fetch that information, it's just files, as the rest of the UNIX system. |
| /root | This is the home directory of the root user. |
| /sbin | Executables the root needs to use, that should be availiable at boot. |
| /tmp | Temporary files. Everybody can write here, but only the owner of the file may remove the file. Root may do it too, of course. |
| /usr | This directory has a lot of subdirs. There is a /usr/bin, a /usr/sbin and so on. /usr doesn't need to be there directly at system boot, but can be mounted a bit later. That way, you can have a small root partition and a bigger /usr and perhaps /home that you mount later. /usr/bin has the same type of programs in it as /bin, but they aren't that essential for the system to work.One subdir of /usr is /usr/local, also having a bin and sbin and lib directory. In local you can place local extensions of the system, and if you upgrade your system the upgrade shouldn't do anything about local, so your changes will still be there. |
| /var | var stands for Variable. This directory holds files that could be a lot bigger in a short time, and get smaller really fast too. Typical examples are mail and news spools. |
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