GNU/Linux File Structure

If you open your terminal and type the following (followed by pressing the 'return' button):

cd /

You will be placed in the top directory of the GNU/Linux file system. If you then type:

ls -al

You will see something similar to this:

sh-2.05b$ ls -al
total 80
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root  4096 Oct  9 13:57 .
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root  4096 Oct  9 13:57 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Oct  5 09:31 bin
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Oct  9 21:47 boot
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root     0 Jan  1  1970 dev
drwxr-xr-x  71 root root  4096 Oct 15 11:35 etc
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  4096 Oct  9 19:21 home
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root  4096 Sep 18 23:29 lib
drwx------   2 root root 16384 Sep 18 20:06 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root  4096 Oct  9 16:36 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root  4096 Oct  8 23:20 opt
dr-xr-xr-x  64 root root     0 Oct 15 11:35 proc
drwx------  75 root root  8192 Oct 15 12:35 root
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23 18:58 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root     0 Oct 15 11:35 sys
drwxrwxrwt  60 root root  4096 Oct 15 12:36 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root  4096 Oct  5 09:31 usr
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root  4096 Oct  9 13:57 var

The above listing is a fairly standard directory structure for GNU/Linux. Each name on the far right represents a directory, and each directory contains files and directories that are specific to that directory. the lib directory, for example contains code libraries that the software on your system uses. For now you only need to be concerned with one directory: the home directory. This directory contains folders that have names corresponding to each user of the machine. If you log in as "adam" for example then you will be logged into a directory in the "home" directory with the same name as your username (i.e., "adam" in this example).

The important thing to be aware of right now is this GNU/Linux directory structure. The other important thing is that GNU/Linux is mostly comprised of text files, so you can change almost every part of GNU/Linux - how it looks and works - by just editing the appropriate text file. In Windows and Macintosh environments you would usually do these kind of changes through small applications with a graphic user interface (GUI). In Windows, for example, if you want to change the resolution of your display you use the 'display' control panel located in the 'control panels' directory. In GNU/Linux you can do this by editing a text file.

This has some advantages - one is that it gives you a lot more control. But it also has some disadvantages - it can be difficult to learn which files to edit and what to change. Sometimes, to ease the transition to GNU/Linux from other operating systems, you will find there are configuration softwares for GNU/Linux installed on your system that use a GUI (Graphical User Interface) similar to Macintosh and Windows. This is not always the case however, and so eventually you will find yourself doing this manually with a text editor.