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Linux Pocket Guide
book

Linux Pocket Guide

by Daniel J. Barrett
February 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
200 pages
5h 40m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Pocket Guide

Directory path part 2: scope

The scope of a directory path describes, at a high level, the purpose of an entire directory hierarchy. Some common ones are:

/

System files supplied with Linux (pronounced “root”)

/usr

More system files supplied with Linux (pronounced “user”)

/usr/games

Games (surprise!)

/usr/kerberos

Files pertaining to the Kerberos authentication system

/usr/local

System files developed “locally,” either for your organization or your individual computer

/usr/X11R6

Files pertaining to the X window system

So for a category like lib (libraries), your Linux system might have directories /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /usr/games/lib, and /usr/X11R6/lib. You might have other scopes as suits the system administrator: /my-company/lib, /my-division/lib, and so on.

There isn’t a clear distinction between / and /usr in practice, but there is a sense that / is “lower-level” and closer to the operating system. So /bin contains fundamental programs like ls and cat, /usr/bin contains a wide variety of applications supplied with your Linux distribution, and /usr/local/bin contains programs your system administrator chose to install. These are not hard-and-fast rules but typical cases.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596806347Errata Page