The somewhat old and AFAIU no longer maintained FHS contains explanations https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/index.html https://refspecs.linuxfoun

The somewhat old and AFAIU no longer maintained FHS contains explanations https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/index.html https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/index.html tl;dr: /usr/local - Place for the system administrator to put local stuff. That is, the package manager (apt/dnf/yum/whatever) won't touch anything there. /usr/bin - "Normal" binaries /usr/sbin - System binaries, that is, binaries that don't do anything useful when run without superuser privileges /bin - Well, nowadays just a symlink to /usr/bin. Read the article to understand the historical background why they were split. /opt - For packages that install everything under one directory instead of being spread out into the standard locations.