原帖地址(含中文翻译)：http://blog.csdn.net/george188/article/details/4821601
/root
This is where the root user lives. The root user is the
god of your system. Root can do anything, up to and including removing
your entire filesystem. So be careful using root.
/bin
Here‘s where your standard linux utilities(read programs)
live -- things like "ls" and "vi" and "more". Generally this directory
is included in your path. What this means is that if you type ‘ls‘, /bin
is one of the places your shell will look to see if ‘ls‘ means
anything.
/etc
Here‘s where the administrative and system configuration
stuff lives. For instance, if you have samba installed, and you want to
modify the samba configuration files, you‘d find them in /etc/samba.
/dev
Here‘s where files that control peripherals live. Talking
to a printer? Your computer is doing it from here. Same goes for disk
drives, usb devices, and other such stuff.
/home
Here‘s where your data is stored. Config files specific
to users, your Desktop folder(whick makes your desktop what it is), and
any data related to your user. Each user will have their own
/home/username folder, with the exception of the root user.
/tmp
This is the Temporary folder. Think of it as a scratch
directory for your Linux system. Files that won‘t be needed by programs
once their used once or twice are put here. Many Linux systems are set
to automatically wipe the /tmp folder at certain intervals, so don‘t put
things you want to keep here.
/usr
Here‘s where you‘ll find extra utilities that don‘t fit
under /bin or /etc. Things like games, printer utilities, and whatnot.
/usr is divided into sections like /usr/bin for programs, /usr/share for
shared data like sound files or icons, /usr/lib for libraries whick
cannot be directly run but are essential for running other programs.Your
package manager takes care of the things in /usr for you.
/opt
Here‘s where optional stuff is put. Trying out the
latest Firefox beta? Install it to /opt where you can delete it without
affecting other settings. Programs in here usually live inside a single
folder whick contains all of their data, libraries, etc.
/usr/local
This is where most manually installed(ie. outside
of your package manager) software goes. It has the same structure as
/usr. It is a good idea to leave /usr to your package manager and put
any custom scripts and things into /usr/local, since nothing important
normally lives in /usr/local.
/media
Some distros use this folder to mount things like usb disks, cd or dvd drives and other filesystems.