A Look at the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 3.0

“The FHS defines the basic structure of a Unix-like operating
system — what the directories are, what types of files and
data belong in each, and so on. This is important for application
developers (so that they know to create temporary files in /tmp/
rather than in the user’s home directory, for instance), but it is
also important for system administrators. Not only does FHS specify
where the directories go, but it specifies important properties
like which directories must be mounted read-only (critical for
security) and which must be available at boot time (so that vital
directories are on local disks not NFS mounts that won’t be
available early in the boot sequence).

This type of info is particularly important for systems like
Linux that do not have a single corporate owner. IBM and Sun could
dictate AIX and Solaris layout without consulting anyone. Red Hat,
SUSE, and Debian, on the other hand, must reach a consensus about
filesystem layout or deal with “fragmentation” complaints.

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