I agree with what NigmaToolin wrote, but I sense that your question is a little
more fundamental.
Unlike Windows where each disk partition gets a different drive letter, and has
an independent file system, Linux has a unified file system. Every disk
partition that is mounted has a direct path back to “/”, the real root of the
file system. This is true no matter whether the item that is mounted is another
partition on the same disk, on another disk, on a CD-ROM drive, or if it is a
network mount. Only the mount command or the file system table (/etc/fstab) need
to know the details. A mount command has the form
mount -t <fs_type> <device_and_partition_name> /<directory_to_mount_it_on>
On my system, the equivalent to mount /home is
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda7 /home
When this mount is executed, the directory /home is overlaid by the files on
that partition and the original contents become invisible.
As to the layout of the file system, your personal files will be located in
/home/<username>/… These files will include your documents, the configuration
files (no registry - thank any deity you want), etc. The system files may vary
with distro, but in general the system configuration files will be in /etc, the
most basic startup files in /boot, the temporary files in /tmp, the logs and
process-control files in /var, the device control files in /dev, the
user-operated utilities in /bin or /usr/bin, and the privileged utilities in
/sbin or /usr/sbin. System libraries (think dll) will be in /lib, /lib64,
/usr/lib, or /usr/lib64. The lib64 varieties will only be on 64-bit systems. The
privileged user’s private files will not be in /home/root, which might not be
available at startup, but in /root.
That is enough of a tutorial to start. If you want more, you will find lots of
descriptions on the Web.
Larry
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