Cleaning up the filesystem
Unification
© Lead Image © Viachaslau Bondarau, 123RF.com
At long last, Debian joins other Unix-like distributions in merging /usr directories.
Since 1993, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (HS) [1] has been the guideline for Unix-like directory structures. It requires the root directory partition to contain all the files the system needs for booting and mounting additional partitions.
This results in 14 directories or symbolic links to them: /bin, /boot, /dev, /etc, /lib, /media, /mnt, /opt, /run, /sbin, /srv, /tmp, /usr, and /var. Only the /opt, /usr, and /var folders can be located on other partitions. In addition, FHS considers the home directory to be optional, along with /root, /lib32, and /lib64.
In 2015, FHS was integrated into the Linux Standard Base (LSB). FHS is now maintained under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.
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