The Linux Filesystem Explained | How Each Directory is Used

This video will give you an overview of the top-level directories found on most Linux systems. We'll go over how some of the common top-level directories are used, and explain their specific purposes within Linux.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:44 - Linux Filesystem Explained
2:06 - /bin/
2:35 - /boot/
2:54 - /dev/
3:52 - /etc/
4:35 - /home/
5:25 - /lib/
6:07 - /lost+found/
6:18 - /media/
6:52 - /mnt/
7:19 - /opt/
7:42 - /proc/
8:27 - /root/
8:46 - /run/
9:04 - /sbin/
9:38 - /srv/
10:11 - /sys/
10:36 - /tmp/
11:00 - /usr/
12:12 - /var/
12:48 - Further Information
13:39 - Outro
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#Linode #Linux #CommandLine #FileStructure
Product: Linode, Linux, Directories; @VeronicaExplains;

[@k00bly26]

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

[@elddr2]

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

[@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!

[@bornsonoran]

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

[@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

[@whoguy4231]

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

[@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.

[@Michael201078]

The best explanation of Linux folders. Just great!

[@MartinJaszczuk]

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

[@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

[@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. 👍

[@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...

[@joojay328]

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

[@terminalreset7659]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@GPEART1]

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

[@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.

[@mrd4233]

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

[@umarhussain9334]

Thanks for these videos really helpful

[@dumbllama8495]

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

[@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 !!

[@asdf51501]

Good info, well presented. Thanks for the video!

[@joel6471]

Well Explained. Thank you for your efforts.

[@josephkelly4893]

Nice work with the Linode gig Veronica!!!

[@andrespasso8511]

loved that gameboy on the background !

[@nytfire3870]

Well explained! Keep it up ma'am 👍

[@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

[@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

[@send2gl]

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

[@chswin]

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

[@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.

[@davidmoore573]

Woot! Bonus Veronica Explains

[@mohammadkhan8712]

That was very descriptive on the Linux file system!!

[@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 🙏🏾✌🏾

[@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.

[@shanearchibald7940]

This was great and Infromative. Thank you very much.

[@nicolycrispi3134]

This is amazing, thank you so much;

[@donstamps]

Great overview! Thank you!

[@kevinrobertandrews]

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

[@MrJoegotbored]

Thanks for the tutorial!

[@CeliniaGava]

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

[@mariyambeevi9896]

M

[@pinkipandey2402]

​

[@synthmania7275]

Proud linode customer. Love your services :).

[@nelsonrobertomiranda7329]

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

[@datag1199]

Great video - thank you! Subscribed

[@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.

[@giuzp95]

Just what I needed!

[@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!

[@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. "

[@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!

[@user-cx5rl9qg1b]

Thank you; it's very educational.

[@guildpilotone]

Really well done! Thanks!

[@ZekeLawl]

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

[@beethreeLIVE]

Love all these cameos on Linode!

[@alanjrobertson]

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

[@tpasi2020UG]

Awesome! Great tutorial thank you.

[@_BeastRein]

Despite already knowing most of this, it was still quite interesting to watch.

[@user-rr7im5og7k]

Great Explanation!

[@CurtisFairlie]

Great explaination 😁

[@casuallybad]

Nice! You gave me GM vibes. Very informative.

[@DeadDad1]

Excellent video, thank you!

[@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.

[@kychemclass5850]

Fantastic Video. Thank youuuuuuu !

[@ShariqueFaizan]

Very nice explanation.. Thanks

[@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".

[@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.

[@TonyGonzales]

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

[@Pindrop22]

That was great! Thank you so much

[@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.

[@abdallahkhamis881]

Awesome .. love it.. thanks alot

[@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.

[@StrikerEureka85]

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

[@andy_3_913]

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

[@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.

[@lucyinchat]

Neat! Linode is doing a thing.

[@nicholashughes8214]

Very helpful Thank you

[@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"._

[@stucatz1130]

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

[@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?

[@johnsanders1728]

Nice Presentation

[@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!!

[@GVlis]

Greeting from Greece! very nice 🙏

[@cbbcbb6803]

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

[@lukaszmatuszewski]

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

[@lorjoo]

Thank you!

[@TomGeewhiskeytango15511meterDX]

Good video for sure 👌

[@orsonc.badger7421]

Great video!!

[@andreashuber332]

Wow great explanation

[@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.

[@gavinkneale2707]

👋 Hi Veronica. Real Thanks. Do you know where I can find Clippy ?

[@vidhuran4414]

I loved it really learned something

[@intriguing24]

You are amazing....I have been looking for someone who will cut down linux into piece for me and I must say....today I found you and I am convinced you are sent. Thank you. I will subscribe and pls I hope you reply and answer my questions.

[@justinnewton7366]

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

[@fernandomontesnavarrete8826]

You are amazing. Thank you.

[@ManontheBroadcast]

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

[@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.

[@act.13.41]

Well done.

[@rupsenshah3345]

Amazing 👏