Last week I started talking about my AVB USB key I received for Christmas and some words about getting
that installed. To start a more detailed look at it, from readying the system to plugging it in and
copying files to it, Scott A. took time out of his day to explain why the drive should be mounted in
/mnt - not in one’s home directory.

Scott writes:

Using /mnt to attach removable file systems is merely
a convention. This is evident by the fact that mount
is used to attach various file system devices (ie,
hda1, hda2, …) to /, /boot, and /root and in some
cases /home, depending on how the system was created.

My biggest reason to use the /mnt directory is that I
can go to any machine and know what is mounted where.
If an entry is made in /etc/fstab I can cat it and
know what actual device is being addressed. If you’ve
ever supported a user by phone you will know how
valuable a standardized file system is. I would say if
a user were in need of access to /mnt/usbdrive in
their /home directory it might be best to create a
softlink to the device mountpoint in /mnt in their
home directory.

Scott’s explanation is lucid and logical. I concur with his explanation. Folks, I understand that
everyone wants everything to be graphical and I really want that for you! But the fact is: if one
is to learn Linux, there is no way one can avoid using ’su,’ some commands and text editors. And
as a Windows administrator, I know that DOS prompts and knowledge of various commands are necessary.
So I won’t shy away from instructing on the use of a cli (Command Line Interface); in fact, since
it is necessary, we *will* cover cli use. But if there is a GUI way to do it, let’s find it. Thank
you, Scott.