Frequently Asked Question

Why does Linux have a single root directory instead of drive letters like Windows?

Linux inherits the Unix model: there is exactly one filesystem tree, rooted at /. Every file, every directory, every device, every additional disk is reached by a path that starts from that single root. When you attach a second disk, a USB stick, or a network share, you mount it at some directory inside the existing tree, /mnt/backup, /media/usb, /srv; and from then on its contents appear as ordinary files under that directory.

Windows took the older CP/M approach where each volume is its own letter (C:, D:, E:), and the user has to know which drive a file is on. The Unix approach hides the physical layout entirely: a program reading /var/log/syslog doesn't care whether /var is on the same disk as /, on a separate partition, on an SSD, or on an NFS server in another building. That decoupling is one reason Unix filesystems scale cleanly from embedded devices to supercomputer clusters.