Dtyjlui

Give this command a try...

man 7 hier

You can also view this manual page here: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/en/man7/hier.7.html

Hope it helps

Late Answer - I've created a roadmap for beginners to follow. If they are looking for a file but don't know where to look, they can use the map to roughly navigate around. You can download a hi-res PNG here. You can find the related post here. I will keep updating both the file and the post when time permits, incorporating helpful comments.

This following text shows the directory structure.

mtk4@laptop:/$ pwd

/

mtk4@laptop:/$ tree -L 1

.

|-- bin

|-- boot

|-- cdrom

|-- dev

|-- etc

|-- home

|-- lib

|-- lost+found

|-- media

|-- mnt

|-- opt

|-- proc

|-- root

|-- run

|-- sbin

|-- selinux

|-- srv

|-- sys

|-- tmp

|-- usr

|-- var

The main components here are:

1. /boot : Contains the boot loader




2. /home : Contains the home directories of users.




3. /bin : All the executable binaries and commands used by all the users on the system are located here.




4. /sbin : This contains the system executable binaries typically used by system administrators.




5. /lib : Contains the system libraries that support the binaries in /bin and /sbin.




6. /etc : Contains the configuration files for network, boot-time, etc.




7. /dev : This has the device files i.e. usb, terminal device or any other device attached to the system are shown here.




8. /proc : Contains information about the process running.




9. /tmp : This is the temporary directory where many processes create the temporary files required. This is purged each time the machine is booted.

For more details, Thegeekstuff link perfectly explain the generic linux file-system.

Users is equivalent to /home. The name of /usr is a historical artifact.

The combined equivalent of Windows and Program Files is the combination of /bin, /boot, /etc, /lib, /sbin, /tmp, /usr and /var. Linux and Windows split up installed software differently. Windows distinguishes between the operating system and companion programs. Linux doesn't make this distinction in the same way; most if not all software comes through Ubuntu (the distributor) and is installed in the same directory hierarchy, and since software is tracked by the package manager, there is no need to store each program in its own directory. On Linux:

• 
  /etc is for system configuration files: configuration files that affect all users, whether they apply to the operating system as a whole or to a specific application.


• 
  /usr is for system code and data (programs, libraries, documentation, etc.).


• 
  /var is for variable or temporary data: temporary files, logs, package manager databases, printer spools, game save files, etc. There is also /tmp for temporary files that can be erased across reboots.


• 
  /bin, /lib and /sbin in the root directory have counterparts in /usr. The files that are outside /usr are the ones that are needed early in the boot process. This is a relic from the time when disks were small and /usr might be on a filesystem shared between several workstations over the network, it isn't really a useful distinction on most systems.


• 
  /boot contains a few files that are needed only to boot the operating system, and not for day-to-day operation.

There are additional directories that don't correspond to anything that Windows has:

• 
  /root is the root user's home directory. The root user is an administrator account not tied to any particular user; it's the user that you change to when you run sudo. Ubuntu doesn't let the root user log in by default.


• 
  /media and /mnt are mount points: they're where you can see the filesystems of other operating systems and remote drives. The Windows equivalent is other drive letters.


• 
  /proc and /sys show system information. On Windows, you need to wade through menus or call system commands or install third-party programs to see this information.

Ubuntu, like other Linux distributions, generally follows the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

Ubuntu (like all UNIX-like systems) organizes files in a hierarchical tree, where relationships are thought of in teams of children and parent. Directories can contain other directories as well as regular files, which are the "leaves" of the tree. Any element of the tree can be references by a path name; an absolute path name starts with the character / (identifying the root directory, which contains all other directories and files), then every child directory that must be traversed to reach the element is listed, each separated by a / sign.

A relative path name is one that doesn't start with /; in that case, the directory tree is traversed starting from a given point, which changes depending on context, called the current directory. In every directory, there are two special directories called . and .., which refer respectively to the directory itself, and to its parent directory.

The fact that all files and directories have a common root means that, even if several different storage devices are present on the system, they are all seen as directories somewhere in the tree, once they are mounted to the desired place

Find examples and more information here: