For those of you coming from windows backgrounds, the way the linux filesystem is laid out may seem confusing at first glance…. but that is where this article comes in !
The first thing you should know when working with linux, is that everything is treated as either a file or directory. Yeap thats right, even hardware is considered a file by linux, and, speaking of hardware… all your hardware devices are located in the /dev directory, but more on that later.
Another thing that confuses windows users, is the fact that linux dosen’t use drive letters to distinguish between different partitions and devices. that is to say in linux, the “root” of your filesystem is / whereas in windows it would most probably be C:\ . Drives in linux are “mounted” to directories where their data can then be accessed, so for instance, if you needed to use your thumbdrive, you would plug it into your computer, and then mount it using the “mount” command, which specifies the path to the device ( something like /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc ) and the directory to mount it to (usually /mnt or /media), then you can happily access your drive from the /mnt or /media folder.
Sounds strange right? well yes it does if you come from a windows environment, where the entire operating system is consolidated onto a single drive. However, with linux and the ability to mount devices as directories, it gives the end user much greater flexibility in splitting up their operating system over several drives or partitions.
