explain the difference between /bin and /usr/bin used in Linux?
1 Answer
They're different directories, both can hold binary files for executing.
Historically the reason for having two, is because you could then keep your essential system binaries in /bin on the root file system, and then have a separate partition for /usr and put your "user" binaries in there.
This is from an era where disks were smaller, and LVM rarer or non existent - so you might have separate physical drives having different bits of your filesystem. It also wasn't too uncommon for someone to trip over the auxiliary disk pack that had /usr on it, causing a system crash!
You would therefore need certain essential commands at boot time - like for example, mount and fsck - these would go in /bin.
However as time has passed, and drives have got larger - the distinction between the various bin locations has become less relevant. On some systems, you'll see symlinks and crossmounts, others not so much.
