Dear all,

I'm a little overwhelmed by the linux filesystem. Should I just put all of my user files (music, text etc) in the appropriate partition under /home. Are there more efficient ways of doing this like partitioning the disk for separate aspects of the filesystem or putting 30gb of music under a separate unique partition?

Another thing I don't yet understand is where to put source files after I have downloaded and compiled the source code. If I get an rpm package and unpack and './configure/make/make install' it then all of the source files are put in the right place. I'm then left with a directory for the package. Where should this live? /usr/local? I guess what I'm trying to ask is where should I download an rpm (or whatever) to before I unpack and compile? In Windows these would live in the Program Files directory under the C:\ drive.

Thanks for your time,

CE.

The generic way is to save all your personal files in /home/YOUR_USER_NAME. You can certainly makes as many directories as you want to further categorize your files. I personally use a different disc which is mounted in a directory (/store) I made at boot up. Since I use multiple distros, this arrangement gives me access to all the common files (music, movies, documents, pictures etc) amongst various distros. My home partition contains only distro specific files.

You can refer to FHS to learn more about the file system layout.

Why would you configure/make/make install rpm packages. They come as a packaged software ready for you to install.

Tux,

Nitpick: When you say separate partitions under home, I think you mean directories..

To me, there are very few reasons for having a lot of different partitions. The obvious reason for /home being on its own partition is so you can back it up separately and also re-install the OS without bothering your data.

Most of the directories you can ignore.

Source code can go anywhere you want, but /home or /opt would be my choices.

There are a few standard partitions I make, almost all those choices are based on mount options. Like /tmp and /var (which are usually mounted noexec and nosuid) or /usr (which is mounted ro). Since I need to write and allow execution from home directories, /home is mounted nosuid and is also kept alone for ease of backup.

There's some black-magic involved with picking sizes of partitions, though. So it's often easier for most people to have just a / and a /home.

I wouldn't say one is more efficient than the other.