Linux directory structure

This page might help you to understand the layout of the Linux file system a bit better.

"Modifiable" column indicates whether or not you can write to this directory on the Atomic Desktop. If the column says "yes" then these files are kept separate from the atomic image and will be preserved regardless of which deployment you boot. If the column is blank, these files are part of the deployment and can't be altered directly (although you can install and uninstall packages using rpm-ostree).

"Overlayed" folder is a special type of folder where files placed in the overlay directory are overlayed over the top of the original files in the ostree image, this is used for the themes directory so you can install extra themes or modify existing themes. Consider it to work like layers in Paint.NET or Photoshop.

/etc folder is special; this directory is kept as part of the deployment but is also writable. The contents are essentially kept as a diff, when a new deployment is created the diff gets applied over the top of it using a 3-way merge.

Directory	Symlinked to	Modifiable	Purpose	Rough Windows equivalent (ish)
Folders managed by the distribution (in /usr), on Atomic Desktop these are managed by rpm-ostree
/usr			Files which are part of the distro, usually installed and managed by the package manager	C:\Program Files\ C:\Windows\
/bin	/usr/bin		Programs on PATH bundled with the distro that you can use as a normal user
/lib	/usr/lib		32-bit system libraries
/lib64	/usr/lib64		64-bit system libraries
/sbin	/usr/sbin		Programs on PATH bundled with the distro that need superuser
Folders managed automatically by the system
/media	/run/media		Temporary automatic mounts for external storage, such as removable USB drives, CD/DVD/Blu-ray disks, SD cards	Drive letters in My Computer
Main folders managed by the administrator
/etc		3-way merge	System-wide configuration files, installing packages sometimes puts files here	Registry
/var		yes	Variable data files not specific to a particular user (e.g. log files) Atomic Desktop stores all modifiable files here that aren't 3-way merged	C:\ProgramData\
Symlinked folders managed by the administrator
/mnt	/var/mnt	yes	Temporary or permanent mounts for any purpose (e.g. secondary hard drives, remote network shares)	Drive letters in My Computer
/opt	/var/opt	yes	Third-party software which isn't installed via the package manager and doesn't follow package structure	C:\Program Files\
/srv	/var/srv	yes	Contains server data files Probably not useful unless you're running server programs
/usr/local	/var/usrlocal	yes	Third-party file directory with a layout that looks like the normal structure of /usr Contains subfolders like bin, lib, lib64, sbin which behave like the distro counterparts including being on PATH	C:\Program Files\
User-level directories
/home	/var/home	yes	User folders for the standard user	C:\Users\
/root	/var/roothome	yes	User folder for the root user
Temp folders, files are kept in RAM and lost when the system shuts down
/run		yes	Used by system packages to store small amounts of runtime data, essentially a system package temp folder, only writable by root	C:\Windows\TEMP\
/tmp		yes	Temp folder where normal people have r/w access	AppData\Local\Temp\
Overlay folders
/usr/share/sddm/themes	/var/sddm_themes/themes	overlayed	Contains "Simple Desktop Display Manager" themes
Special directories
/boot			Files relating to the bootloader and booting the system
/dev			Contains file-like objects which allow I/O access for hardware devices on the system
/proc			Contains file-like objects relating to running processes
/sys			Virtual file system that can be accessed to set or obtain information about the kernel's view of the system
Other directories
/rpms			Unknown - seems empty/unused and there isn't any r/w access to this folder
/sysroot			Folder containing files relating specifically to atomic desktop ostree deployment data is symlinked from /sysroot/ostree to /ostree