Unlike Linux System Directories, user and application-related directories are for user data, temp files, app resources, and variable data:
| Path | Description |
|---|---|
/home | User data |
/usr | Application files and system resources |
/var | Varaible data |
/tmp | Temporary storage |
/home
This directory contains personal files, settings, and data for each user in the system. Generally, users will have full control of their own home directories.
/usr
This contains system-wide user-installed programs, libraries, and documentation. Here, sub directories are used to organise the files. For example, we have /usr/bin, which holds application binaries used by regular users1 (as opposed to sbin, which are for root use).
In other words, this file structure more or less mimics the / structure, but is designed for regular users in general. Note that /usr/share is where documentation and non-executable data is generally stored.
/var
This directory contains variable files that may change frequently, such as logs (in /var/log), email (in /var/email), or website data (in /var/www).
/tmp
Temporary files are stored here. This is different from /var in that temp files are generally for applications to use while the user works with the program. They are often deleted after a pre-defined period or a reboot.
Footnotes
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The applications in these directories will generally be commonly used programs that are not critical to system startup, such as text editors, browsers, compilers, etc. ↩