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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by callcc@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Hey, I've recently designed a Poster about the FHS since I often forget where I should place or find things. Do you have any feedback how to make it better?

I updated the poster: https://whimsical.com/fhs-L6iL5t8kBtCFzAQywZyP4X use the link to see online.

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[-] Admax@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

Damn that's some great work ! When I started linux I wish I had found such ressources, I was really curious what each of these directories were for.

Would you mind if your material was reused (with credit) for education purposes ?

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago

I'd be more than happy if this was used. Do whatever you want with it as long as you abide by the CC BY-SA-4.0 license. This means you can share freely and modify as long as you keep the authorship information and share with same license.

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[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 19 points 11 months ago
[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

it bothers me a little the entry is not called fhs: man fhs

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Added to new version. Thanks for the suggestion.

[-] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

I really like this, but can I have a black background version please?

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[-] Samueru@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We need something like this for home, I hate that programs like steam and firefox place themselves directly into home instead of ~/.config and ~/.llocal.

I even move my personal themes to /usr/share/themes because not everything works with ~/.local/share/themes and needs a ~/themes directory instead.

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[-] cerulean_blue@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago

Super useful, thanks. Actually made a lot of things click in my head about how Linux works.

When did /home get deprecated? Is /usr/local the replacement?

Sorry for the n00b question (I'm not a noob, but I have been off Linux for a few years), figured the answer may be useful to other users too

[-] vole@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

/home is not deprecated, it's optional but common. Here is the section from FHS: https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch03s08.html

[-] dino@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

then the legend should be fixed its confusing, as is the whole idea of FHS is outdated and a chore for new users to get into (i still don't fully understand it)

  • difference between /media and /mnt
  • wtf is /run? some glorified /temp?
  • /usr/sbin "non vital system binaries" ... aha ok, whatever don't tell me you understand the difference between 6 (SIX !) differen bin/sbin folders
  • could continue forever...
[-] callcc@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

The legend is a bit broken. Will fix it maybe.

As for the rest, yes, the FHS can be confusing. It's from a time where mostly professional admins would deal with it and requirements were pretty different from today's end-user systems. If you want to understand more, I urge you to read the spec. It's highly readable! https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs.html

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[-] ferralcat@monyet.cc 9 points 11 months ago

I'm surprised to hear /home is non standard.

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I guess the reason it's not in FHS is that FHS is concerned about system wide things whereas /home is the opposite. It's the user's realm.

There is XDG for /home/$user though.

[-] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Are you planning on doing one for XDG?

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[-] pipows@lemmy.today 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This is a very useful, very well done chart, congratulations.

But what a mess is FHS. Easily the worst thing of linux design for me

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[-] netwren@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

I don't understand the ambiguity of where to put your projects.

I've typically always put things under /opt/ TIL /etc/opt was where the config should go.

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[-] urfavlaura@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago
[-] dino@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 11 months ago

does guix go the same was as nixos in that regard? where can I find info regarding FHS in guix?

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Afaik guix is very similar to nixos in that respect. The store where applications are installed is called /gnu there.

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[-] MaxPower@feddit.de 8 points 11 months ago

Great but what I'm missing is the information that "usr" does not stand for "user", like many people think or even say. If it would the name could actually be "user" and not "usr".

The chart actually does not say what exactly it stands for. It's "user resources" AFAIK.

It's worth clearing this up in my opinion.

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the input. Things are complicated: https://askubuntu.com/a/135679 . Apparently it originally meant "user" but then slowly was used for system stuff. So people invented backcronyms.

[-] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 4 points 11 months ago

That's just retconning/backronyming it.

/usr does historically stand for user. It's where the user home directories were on old Unix versions.

[-] mankeulv@lemmy.latrans.cloud 7 points 11 months ago

Nicely done! Do you perchance have any hi res version?

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Thanks! Unfortunately I've used closed source whimsical.com for this and don't have a paid subscription. They only offer low-res for those accounts since recently :(

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[-] ultra@feddit.ro 7 points 11 months ago
[-] dannym@lemmy.escapebigtech.info 4 points 11 months ago

well nix still uses the same structure, the only difference is that files are symlinked to files in subfolders of the /nix/store folder.

For example you may find that /etc/hosts is just a symlink to /nix/store/69420aaabbbcccdddfffggghhhiii420-hosts

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[-] callyral@pawb.social 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

how is /usr/local local and not system-wide? i though it was for programs you compiled yourself?

[-] TheEntity@kbin.social 14 points 11 months ago

"Local" in this context means local to this whole machine. From the perspective of a single user, it's system-wide. But then from the perspective of a sysadmin managing dozens of such systems, it's local.

[-] callyral@pawb.social 4 points 11 months ago

thanks for the explanation!

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Many FHS things don't make much sense for single-user (human user) systems on modern hardware. /usr/local does though. It's for you (as admin) to install software that doesn't come with the os.

[-] Crow@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

So why does my system mount my drives to /run/user/1000…?

[-] callcc@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

1000 might by your user's user-id

[-] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago

1000 is the default ID given to the first-created user on Debian-based systems.

May or may not be the case with other distros. Haven't checked.

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[-] dan@upvote.au 4 points 11 months ago

I've never seen /etc/opt used. Usually if an app is in /opt, the entire app is there, including its config which is frequently at /opt/appname/etc/.

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this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
561 points (98.4% liked)

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