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4) Mounted filesystems

In Linux (and many other Unix), file systems (Partitions) are mounted as part of the directory tree, that is, adding and deleting partition (or harddisk) become simple (native filesystems only, of course), since the main idea procedure is to copy the data, and then replace the existing directory with the mounted partition.

Non-native filesystems are generally supported. Linux developers tried to include support for variety of filesystems, such as FAT, NTFS, UFS, etc. to simplify their life, and in doing so, ours. However, we cannot trust a system which is running on non-native filesystem, while we still require access to it. That is why (as a rule of thumb) one should never work with non-native filesystem as part of the system tree, and that's why all non-native FS are located in /mnt (including cdrom, floppy, etc.)

The reason for immediate and non-immediate binaries lies in this. When system goes up in maintenance mode, there might be problem accessing other FS. It might even be that the maintenance mode is caused by a failing partition.  We need to have the essential binaries usable, and the rest of the binaries can be allowed to be accessed only on a fully working system. The smaller the root partition is, the safer it might be.

Mount points are configured in /etc/fstab.