The Linux Filesystem Explained | How Each Directory is Used

[@k00bly26]

The best explanation of the Filesystem I've seen and by now. Thanks Veronica for explaining

[@whoguy4231]

This is something EVERY linux YT channel MUST cover !!! .... Thank You lovely lady

[@jaminoes_]

NOTE: /home is more akin to C:\Users in Windows, rather than C:\Users\WHATEVER\Documents

[@DominicDeligann]

yeah, i was about to comment this too.

[@TheTransporter007]

Yeah, it's a painfully horrendous error.

[@leonidas14775]

"C:\Documents and Settings\account\My Documents\"

[@DistrosProjects]

@@leonidas14775 not since XP afaik, they changed it

[@monikagaikwad7303]

@@leonidas14775 1 G1

[@threadtapwhisperer5136]

Remember, pressing the TAB key will auto complete the most likely completion. Speed the file path entry in terminal by at least 30 percent.

[@AndersJackson]

And shortcut keys are from Emacs.

[@stephenweishaar9058]

Been using Linux for nearly 15 years, and I literally only learned this ..... earlier this week! So useful!!!

[@MasterHigure]

Depending on what shell you're using, but Bash and most other common shells will tab-autocomplete as far as it can autocomplete unambiguously, not to the most likely completion. There is a substantial difference between the two.

[@GeorgeGzirishvili]

3:30: Your second device has no partitions there. Partitions are ones that end with _p_ followed by a number. 11:00: _USR_ stands for _"Unix System Resource",_ not _"user"._

[@elddr2]

Wow! Just wow! This was amazingly explained! Will recommend this video 100%

[@ramial-saadi3113]

" I assure you that the original contents of /etc were the "et cetera" that didn't seem to fit elsewhere. Other variants might do their own etymologies differently. " " You can find references to "et cetera" in old Bell Labs UNIX manuals and so on - it's used for system configuration, but it used to be where all the stuff that didn't fit into other directories went. "

[@ZekeLawl]

I’m not a sysadmin but as a new Linux user just to replace windows this is very helpful. Thank you

[@bettyswunghole3310]

As someone who was schooled in the "opposition camp" (namely DOS/Windows) and has only recently started getting into Linux/UNIX, the Linux file system was pretty overwhelming...vids like this help to make it less scary, though! 😁

[@salkjshaweoiuenvohvr]

Veronica is awesome! I've struggled to understand the file system every time I ever tried Linux and you explained it only once and now I finally understand it! Thank you!!!

[@Alex-fl2yh]

I agree. Does she have an own channel? edit it is linked, nevermind

[@gg-gn3re]

Just like windows, 90% of them aren't ever used by users

[@mortenlund1418]

She is awesome a lot

[@Foulancer]

As a configuration manager I have to say that the Linux file system to me looks like chaos. As if either a result of lack of discipline amongst the open source community or due to legacy. In any case, thanks for this informative video!

[@thedarkknight4243]

Thank you so much Linode and especially Veronica for explaining Linux System. Please do more videos on the Linux system and Linux Server Administration, much appreciated. Thanks

[@MikeWood]

For some reason I never saw this when it was first posted. Really good info which I had in one spot when I was first learning Linux. Nicely done.

[@TonyGonzales]

Veronica is awesome, and so are you! And Linux!

[@JarrodMcKitterick]

Thank you, Veronica. Will be sharing your Linux filesystem explanation to all my newbie Linux friends. This video is Awesome and so are you!

[@crevanizekil]

Finally, a lady explaining linux. Thank you, this is very helpful. Good stuff.

[@MartinJaszczuk]

This is an excellent and concise video. Some previous knowledge required, but NICE!

[@asaskald]

Veronica's channel is so fun and wholesome and now she's on Linode's channel? Excellent! Thanks, Veronica!

[@vwbond]

What is the name of her channel 🤔

[@asaskald]

@@vwbond Veronica Explains it All.

[@jimbojimberson9934]

I love the Unix / directory! I remember switching to MacOS and Linux exclusively and falling in love with the simplicity. This is an awesome guide to all of them!

[@linuxstreamer8910]

true after coming from windows it is so easy on windows i had some problems when i unplugged & plugged in a external hdd it changed letters I had some games installed on it it broke so much now i don't have to worry about that anymore ALL HAIL LINUX

[@birusingh7820]

@@linuxstreamer8910 the

[@linuxstreamer8910]

@@birusingh7820 who cares

[@NuttachaiTipprasert]

Comming from Windows, I found Linux's filesystem makes a lot more sense. I love how everything in Linux (or Unix, for that matter) is just a file. Everything is clear and I can easily find where my files are because there's no A, B, C, D, E.... Z directory or registry nonsense unlike in Windows.

[@herrbonk3635]

I tried that positive attitude with Unix in the 1980s (my employer had heard "it was the future"). Didn't work out well though, still hate most aspects of Unix and its rigid 1970s style conventions. (The Linux kernel that Linus wrote for the 386 is another thing.)

[@Conenion]

Drive letters made (somewhat) sense back than, when computers had 1 or 2 floppy drives. Not much thereafter.

[@herrbonk3635]

@@Conenion To me, that CP/M heritage makes perfect sense even today, when you have various USB-sticks, memory cards, and external SSDs. It would be nice if the letters could be words though, i.e. a short description of the unit. (No, I'm no M$ fan by any means, just simple and practical.)

[@Conenion]

@@herrbonk3635 > makes perfect sense even today, Not so perfect then, since drive letters have length of 1 char only. > It would be nice if the letters could be words though, In Linux you label a partition. See mount -l, or lsblk. lsblk will show you /run/media//. And any decent GUI file manager will just show you the label. Like for example Nemo. (lsblk -o LABEL shows you only the labels.)

[@herrbonk3635]

@@Conenion That's not how it was in Unix, iirc. But a Windows shell (like Total Commander or other) could actually do the same. Because the connection between a drive letter and the id-string of an external SSD, other Nand-flash unit, or whatever, is known and visible via "the registry".

[@Michael201078]

The best explanation of Linux folders. Just great!

[@joojay328]

The best video explaining the filesystem, breaking it down. THANK YOU!

[@blackchristiangeek]

Thanks for the tutorial. I have taken a lot of notes and I clearly have a lot more to learn about Linux basics :-) Also, it was interesting to see someone (you) for the first time that I have been listening to for a long time. Thus, I listen to far more podcasts than I watch KZbin videos. Again, thanks and God bless

[@Joe-km1vs]

I’m new to Linux, this is only the second video of yours that I’ve seen, and I think your videos teaching Linux are some of the best I’ve seen! Very clear explanations where I’m able to understand, and your funny sometimes 😂❤ Sincere gratitude and thanks for explaining this foreign OS to an average self/taught Windows user like myself 🙏🏾✌🏾

[@CeliniaGava]

I hope you will expand beyond Linode, you are WONDERFUL at explaining linux

[@mariyambeevi9896]

M

[@pinkipandey2402]

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[@sinzies]

Cool intro for someone new to Linux helps demystify any confusion. Loved the /etc pronunciation never heard it that way :) been using e.t.c.

[@atreusduvelll600]

Great to see you on this channel Veronica! I always love your videos, especially the ones where you demystify some big topics like this. 👍

[@andrespasso8511]

loved that gameboy on the background !

[@pac-sjwepnic8131]

I really appreciate this video. the basics explanation is enough to get started. Helps me think in the right direction when something happens. Thanks Veronica.

[@josephkelly4893]

Nice work with the Linode gig Veronica!!!

[@bornsonoran]

This is my 4th time watching. I absolutely love how you breakdown the file system. You make learning Linux very understandable for me.

[@zameerpashablr]

Thank you so much for explaining in detail, I have been learning for the past 1 year , I regularly follow Learn Linux TV....he always speaks about Linode, I wanted to learn a lot about Linux Distros. Thank you so much once again.

[@BilalHeuser1]

I like to use the -F option when I use the ls command. Using this option, it will classify each entry and indicate what kind of file it is.

[@maharajahdann]

At last, Bilal!!

[@pfloydphanatic]

Thanks for the fun and helpful video! I just took a Linux class and wow what a lot of information. Have like a 30+ page word doc of all commands and another one for all of the directories. It will be a while until I take my Linux+ exam! I told the instructor that I think I know more about the Linux system than Windows now. He's my scripting teacher too for the summer. Think this one's going to be rough...

[@lecomtegaetan8120]

... Thank you so much T_T .I had always been looking for THIS content somewhere about the filesystem but explained that way with important things added while in the stream just enough to keep looking for informations more deeply.

[@chswin]

This is very well done. She’s a pro communicator!

[@hudsonriverlee]

Incredibly informative video. Wow. I am stunned at how little I know and knew and now feel my eyes opened... my Linux Mint machine is only for Ham radio use .. so very few programs other than Ham radio related programs will be required.. knowing the how and where is a huge help. Well lit videos with good audio and a confident presenter are key ! Well done !!

[@GPEART1]

The symbolic links information was great to learn, thank you!

[@umarhussain9334]

Thanks for these videos really helpful

[@Appalling68]

1:17 Kernel 4.18. Kernel 4.18? Like wow! LOL! Thank you SO MUCH for such an informative video. You rock, Linux lady!

[@androth1502]

i've noticed in the home folder, there is a .config folder where *most apps store their user-defined configuration files in their respective folders. however there are some like bash and x11 that dump their configs right in the user folder. is this some kind of legacy thing? it would be nice if all the programs obeyed the .config/ convention.

[@wsippel]

Yeah, the .config folder is related to the relatively new (as far as standard adoption goes) freedesktop XDG base directory specification. Not all programs follow freedesktop standards, and especially legacy applications sometimes don't adopt such changes for compatibility reasons.

[@TheVexinator]

Flexibility is not always your friend. Flexibility means there are multiple possible causes when something goes wrong, increasing complexity of troubleshooting. That said, good introduction!

[@rafalg87]

There's some flexibility and some legacy stuff which is fine, but where it gets messy from my point of view is in the /usr/local directory which starts its own duplicated structure, e.g. it can have bin, lib or etc subdirectories. I'm looking at a certain project that uses containers and one of them has configuration in /etc/php while another has it in /usr/local/etc/php. I never know where to look first.

[@davidinmichael]

You made this for me, right? Thank you 🎉

[@mrd4233]

I think this one is the best linux quality explanation on yt!!

[@dumbllama8495]

I loved it. it's concise and fast paced, which is great for learning starter concepts in any field.

[@jeremycoleman3282]

Veronica is my new favorite Linode developer advocate

[@FGB64]

Most (all?) of these directory names were inherited from Unix. I believe usr stood for Unix System Resources.

[@lucyinchat]

That might be apocryphal, it might just be a shortening of user.

[@VeronicaExplains]

@@lucyinchat That's my understanding as well- it didn't stand for anything other than "user" as in "user-land resources" as opposed to "system-land resources" found in the other directories.

[@Hagar921]

Just learned a lot. Thank you Veronica!

[@send2gl]

Well presented, used Linux for ages but nice to get clarification on some folder uses.

[@Babbili]

this is one of the best Linux filesystem vids, wonder why she's not anymore in Linode

[@cbbcbb6803]

You work with COBOL? I love it. I will subscribe. What COBOL do you work with?

[@OMNS777]

Proud linode customer. Love your services :).

[@BG-qb6dq]

The second drive is actually not partitioned. "n1" is the namespace.

[@Therealbrez]

I can not imagine anyone ever calling it etsy instead of E T C, there is a correct way of pronoucning it and it is the one I grew up using

[@MHarvey-tp5km]

"etc" is literally pronounced "ETCETERA" according to its creator Dennis Richie. It's not a mystery.

[@davidmoore573]

Woot! Bonus Veronica Explains

[@dragonek_gnu_linux_pl]

finally i found a video where is expleied all i man ALL linux filesystem directories not only some and /srv /run /sys skipped almost at all tutorials

[@nelsonrobertomiranda7329]

Amazing video! about the usr directory, some would call it "unix system resources", hence the name

[@stucatz1130]

What is the keyboard you are using? Looks like a 65%er ? Thank you for the vid

[@andy_3_913]

You're explaining, but not where I was expecting...confused lol. But excellent job all the same :)

[@nickconstantine6308]

This video was very concise thank you! I have been deploying sites with a recipe for a while and I wanted to learn more about linux. I would really like to see proper mern stack deployment tutorials that utilize things like s3 comparable object storage and node balancers. Maybe something similar with Wordpress installs too would be pretty helpful. I feel like this would help me go from beginner to intermediate.

[@alanjrobertson]

Great video, thanks. Also loved you addressing the elephant in the room around the pronunciation of /etc 😂🐘👍

[@ManontheBroadcast]

A Users and Permissions Tutorial would be a great follow-up ...

[@TheLazyJAK]

I'm pretty sure /usr stands for universal system resources or something like that

[@mohammadkhan8712]

That was very descriptive on the Linux file system!!

[@SatishKumar-ut4pu]

Please want to learn more about file system types, EXT3 , 4 LVM, XFS how to extended them when we augment additional disk space, also role of /etc/fstab

[@guysmith1134]

That was cool, very calm and clear. I would like a video on - If I have one Linux system on my home home network, can I access the word documents on my Network storage.

[@Phasma6969]

Yes just make the folder a share in Windows and mount it on Linux. You can google MULTIPLE methods.

[@terminalreset7659]

Excellent video! Thanks! Made it easy to get a good understanding of the file system.

[@beethreeLIVE]

Love all these cameos on Linode!

[@MitchSiripanya]

Thank you; it's very educational.

[@justinnewton7366]

Thanks for the help... I'm still trying to learn the system...

[@daanota]

You pronounce etc right. It's NOT "et cetera" since it's not a shortened word. It's NOT "e.t.c." since it's not an abbreviation of three words. So, yes, you got the right pronunciation of the word.

[@StrikerEureka85]

i do some development with Coldfusion and when installing on Linux, it usually goes by default in the /opt directory

[@GVlis]

Greeting from Greece! very nice 🙏

[@asdf51501]

Good info, well presented. Thanks for the video!

[@giuzp95]

Just what I needed!

[@wedrownysowianin9387]

Very good explanations as /run seems kind of new and I rarely hear about /sys at all. However /opt still seems to have a lot of use. The Brave browser places nearly all of its files there, as do some commercial VPNs, along with my current distro (Sparky Linux) placing a lot of its wallpapers there.

[@casuallybad]

Nice! You gave me GM vibes. Very informative.

[@LokiScarletWasHere]

Your description of /usr is lacking. This should have been explained as the directory for "userspace" pragram data. These days, almost everything besides the kernel is userspace, so this is why almost everything installed goes there. This would explain more easily to any sysadmins or students watching this video, why it's called /usr. It's also kinda used as a prefix for elevated programs to help protect the root filesystem if they're compromised, but that's for those who *really* keep asking "why" man hier is also horribly outdated. It thinks people still mount /usr as a netshare.

[@lucyinchat]

Neat! Linode is doing a thing.

[@DivanLinnow]

Suggestion for video : Explain how to install and configure Kubernetes on Ubuntu server. Also maybe explain Gluster vs Ceph?

[@eddiedantes7732]

Thank you for explaining in a way a moron like me can understand. This is how my mom used to talk to me when I was five, and I greatly appreciate it.

[@frankwalder3608]

I think it would be nice to see a video on the differences between ext2, ext3, and ext4. Including information about journaling would also be nice.

[@nganlinux3313]

0jS

[@SM-1010]

The Second Extended File System (ext2) is one of the oldest Linux file systems still available. ext2 stores data in a standard directory and file hierarchy. The maximum file size supported is 2 TB. An ext2 volume can be up to 4 TB in size. File names can be up to 255 characters long. Linux users, groups, and permissions are supported. ex2 does not use journaling (which is used in most modern file systems). As a result, ext2 takes a long time to recover if the system shuts down abruptly. The Third Extended File System (ext3) is an updated version of ext2 that supports journaling. Before committing a transaction to a storage device, the ext3 file system records the transaction to the journal and marks it as incomplete. After the disk transaction is complete, the file system marks the transaction as complete in the journal. By doing this, ext3 can keep track of the most recent file transactions and whether or not they were completed. This allows ext3 to recover much more quickly than ext2 in the event of an unclean system shutdown. ext4 (most common) is the fourth generation file system in the ext file system family. ext4 includes all of the features found with ext2 and ext3 with the addition of the following features: Support for file sizes up to 16 TB and disk sizes up to 1 exabyte (EB). Supports up to four billion files in the file system. Uses checksums to verify the integrity of the journal file itself. Checksums help improve the overall reliability of the system because the journal file is the most heavily used file of the disk.

[@MatthewSamson]

It's worth noting that /usr stands for "Unix System Resources," hence why all of your system resources go in there :-)

[@donstamps]

Great overview! Thank you!

[@KnutBluetooth]

Correction: Historically before the big /usr merge, a lot of programs in both /bin and /sbin were statically linked. The /sbin directory was used for programs that a normal user shouldn't use. Typically programs that require root. It's not recommended to download files in /tmp because other regular users or system accounts could access them if the permissions aren't set right and other shenanigans. Some Linux distros have a temporary directory in /run that is private to the user because of this.

[@herrbonk3635]

I agree on the static linking. But who cares about "other users" in 2022? Eveyone has got their own personal computer for 30-40 years now (i.e. where you download things, so not talking about payroll or security systems).

[@KnutBluetooth]

@@herrbonk3635 What is it that you do not understand about the word "Historically" ?

[@herrbonk3635]

@@KnutBluetooth Nothing dude. _"It's not recommended to download files in /tmp because [...]"_ sounded like present tense to me.

[@KnutBluetooth]

@@herrbonk3635 Oh that. But the point still stands. Thought you were talking about /sbin. There are plenty of system user accounts (network daemons with their own user accounts) who could access the files in /tmp if they don't have proper permissions and there is also all the file/directory creation race condition shenanigans which is why mktemp exists. These network daemons should be sandboxed with restricted filesystem access on systemd systems, but many still aren't and most non-systemd distros have no sandboxing at all. Private temp dirs in /run are not just decoration. Also these days /tmp is more often than not a tmpfs which is going to be a problem for some downloads.

[@shanearchibald7940]

This was great and Infromative. Thank you very much.

[@kychemclass5850]

Fantastic Video. Thank youuuuuuu !

[@datag1199]

Great video - thank you! Subscribed

[@TheBoxyBear]

I worked with windows software that often use the temp folder to avoid corruption when writing files. The stream would write to the temporary file then that file would be moved to the right location, overwriting the original. Is that a way the same directory is often used on Linux?

[@joel6471]

Well Explained. Thank you for your efforts.

[@ShariqueFaizan]

Very nice explanation.. Thanks

[@lukaszmatuszewski]

/usr actually stands for Unix System Resources which perfectly makes sense.

[@MrJoegotbored]

Thanks for the tutorial!

[@nytfire3870]

Well explained! Keep it up ma'am 👍

[@AdventuresofAwesomeJoe]

The video that I didn't know I needed. Watching while installing ubuntu22.04lts

[@tonymckeown5393]

aghhh! help, I am really quite new to this stuff but have been reading and practising at the terminal. Proud of myself for following even though your guitar was distracting me: it looks great. During the 'media' and 'mnt' part I got so lost; is it one or the other or both' or am I being silly. Please guide me to a book or something. You clarified the lost/found file; so big thanks for that.

[@tonymckeown5393]

in my haste I scribbled out my confusion. Your directions to Hierarchy Standards... fantastic, Just what I needed. Great work, you have another subscribed fan!

[@CurtisFairlie]

Great explaination 😁

[@kevinrobertandrews]

That was a lot, but very well explained!!! Thank you.