Important locations in Linux

For a beginner migrating from Windoz, this is pretty confusing. So, I'm just going to put some information here that comes from a December 2, 2005 mail to the Fedora list.

Basic executables: /bin

Userland executables: /usr/bin

System executables: /sbin and /usr/sbin

Personal programs: ~/bin

Some programs end up in /usr/local/bin or /opt/bin.

Few are hidden in /lib and /usr/lib and some other places.

To find where a command resides, do:

type commandname

A list of the commands built into the shell can be gotten by typing "help" to the command prompt.

Non-builtin commands documentation is available by typing "man commandname".

The Linux Documentation Project (TDLP in short) provides a lot of information - especially for users migrating from Windoz to Linux.