Origin of Linux File System

[sotjian]

As a new Linux (FC6) user I'm curious about the rationalization behind how the Linux file system was defined. Why binaries are scattered all over the / in all those directories as opposed to what OS X does.

I get that there are some directories for admin based applications and some for users but why have bin and sbin directories in root and in /usr?

I've found lots of tutorials that explain what the directories are and what they do, I'm more interested in the "history" of the development.

I'm a flake.
Cheers

[Cabhan]

Well, have you read the standard itself?

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

Essentially, files in /bin and /sbin are applications that need to be available immediately, even before other filesystems are mounted (/usr is often a different partition). These are system-critical files (your shell, etc.) that you need to be able to use even if a filesystem is corrupted, or such things.

/usr/bin and /usr/sbin contain distro-standard applications (or are supposed to). In reality, most things you install get thrown here (they're supposed to get thrown into /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin).

If you're looking for something more like the way Mac OS X does it, Rox might interest you:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/static.html

I hope that helps!