@maya_s_trojan@piefed.blahaj.zone
2026-10-18 21:20 UTC
okay, well, your root directory is always / that’s where your system stuff lives like /usr/ /bin/ /etc/ et cetera. however, you also have in there alongside the system stuff a /home/ directory, which is where your user data lives. Think of /home/ as your C:\Users\ folder. It’s where whatever your username is is going to live.
The thing is, when installing the OS, you can choose to set up (manually) to have your /home/ directory on another disk or disk partition, which separates it from the root / directory psychically or logically respectively.
It would be like if you could re-install windows entirely but never lose your C:\Users\ folder because it actually lived at D:\Users\ and Windows just always looked for your users folder upon install (which Ubuntu does) and allows you to re-use it if it finds it.
So:
/ = C:
/home/ = C:\Users\
It’s not a perfectly equal metaphor, but it’s pretty close.
Replies (3)
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@dusk@piefed.social 2026-10-19 01:19
Even when I was back on windows, my data was always stored on a separate physical drive, I do the same now on linux, and will never understand why anyone would choose to store the 2 on the same drive (unless they only have 1 drive). I didn’t use ‘my documents’ and I don’t use ‘home’ either. No doubt there are some benefits to doing so though.
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@Well1@lemmy.world 2026-10-19 09:08
Gotcha! Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me :D
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@freeman@feddit.org 2026-10-19 16:07
Thanks! Very useful!