Linux hierarchical directory structure

■ /bin This directory contains executable files necessary to manage and run the Linux system, including shells (such as bash) and file system management utilities such as cp and rm.
 
■ /boot This directory contains your bootloader files, which are required to boot your system.
 
■ /dev This directory contains special files that are used to represent the various hardware devices installed in the system. Remember when we installed Linux? We said that the first SCSI hard disk drive in your system was called sda and the first IDE hard drive in your system was called hda. The files that represent these devices are stored in /dev.Other hardware devices are also represented by files in /dev.
 
■ /etc This directory contains text-based configuration files used by the system as well as services running on the system. You can edit these files with a text editor to customize how Linux behaves.
 
■ /home This directory contains subdirectories that serve as home directories for each user account on your Linux system.
 
■ /lib This directory contains code libraries used by programs in /bin and /sbin. Your kernel modules are also stored in the modules subdirectory of /lib.
 
■ /media This directory is used by some Linux distributions (such as SUSE Linux) to mount external devices, including CD drives, DVD drives, and floppy drives.
 
■ /mnt This directory is used by some Linux distributions (such as Fedora or Red Hat) to mount external devices, including CD drives, DVD drives, and floppy drives. As with the /media directory on a SUSE system, a series of subdirectories are used to do this.
 
■ /opt This directory contains files for some programs you install on the system.
 
■ /proc  This directory is a little different from the other directories in this list. /proc doesn’t actually exist in the file system. Instead, it’s a pseudo file system that is dynamically created whenever it is accessed. It’s used to access process information from the Linux kernel.
 
■ /root This directory is the root user’s home directory. Notice that it is located separately from the home directories for other users in /home.
 
■ /sbin This directory contains important system management and administration files, such as fdisk, fsck, ifconfig, init, mkfs, shutdown, and halt.
 
■ /srv This directory contains subdirectories where services running on the system (such as httpd and ftpd) save their files.
 
■ /sys This directory contains information about the hardware in your system.
 
■ /tmp This directory contains temporary files created by you or by the system.
 
■ /usr This directory contains application files. In fact, most of the application files used on your system are saved in a subdirectory of /usr.
 
■ /var This directory contains a variety of variable data, including your system log files.