Could you please , pretty please...
APPLY SOME LOGIC TO WHERE YOU PUT THE FILES?!?!?

With every distro , I tried so far , applications appear to be installed in directories one would expect the LEAST.

I mean ; Where do you peeps think /opt is meant for?
As far as I know , "opt" stands for "optional" , ie- everything , not needed to run the system , like browsers , graphic applications , text-editors.
Is it reall too much of a strain on your cerebral functions to grasp the notion , that users like to have their applications arranged in an orderly manner?

It sure seems like that way ; Mozilla(as far as I know , practically the de-facto standard for webbrowsing) likes to be installed into /opt/mozilla.
Nice , orderly and easy to find , right?

Then why do all of you distro-builders put it nearly EVERYWHERE , BUT IN /opt?
And while I'm at it ; This is also a neat place to stuff all those other applications , like the Gimp , Opera , editors , etc with the simple , yet elegant format of /opt/[programname]

Really hard , isn't it?
Maybe you peeps are thinking "But that's where "which" and "whereis" are for".
Well , let me break some news to you ivory-tower-dwellers : Those commands are last resorts not something to start with.

At least in this regard , Winblows has it better organised.
(Oh WOW! I finally found something positive about M$....)
[/end rant]

it seems that you're overtly preoccupied with where these things are located (like mozilla). i find that using locate, whereis and find, i can find pretty much anything i need on my box in about ~5 seconds, whereas the same "find files" command on windoze would take much longer to find what i want (and there's that fucking dog, i hate that dog).

oh, and if you're irritated with where programs install, try compiling them from source yourself and during the configuration step, where you issue "./configure" make sure to tack on the prefix specifier (an option for almost any install from source) like this "./configure --prefix=/opt" or you could make it /usr, whatever you want. this way, you can have all your favorite programs in one place, rather than split between /opt and /usr, etc. i think you can do the same thing with packages, but you'd have to look into it.

and speaking of cerebral strain, perhaps you should exercise more of it, as linux is completely configurable and all of your gripes have straightforward remedies. what all the distro makers have worked to bring you (the end user) is a highly configurable box filled with tools, and it takes some time and dedication to learn the ropes. i know this is a lot of personal responsibility, but you'll never become a wizard if you don't work at it . damn, the view from this tower is nice.

Moved: General type discussions belong in General. Regards.

Trickykid: I dare to disagree with your decission : I originally posted this in "Linux General" and that seemed to fit quite well ; After all I'm adressing what I percieve as a general problem in Linux specifically.
But that's beside the real point.

On to buissness:
yocompia: May I bring it to your attention , that there ARE courses in reading? You'd benefit from it quite a lot , it seems :
For I was NOT complaining about where programs try to install themselves by default(I do compile from source and know where to stuff 'em) rather that I was complaining about where the distro-builders are locating the programs ; that's what the (end-)user is presented.(and is a pain to correct)
To stick with your own analogy of the toolbox(And trust me ; with that you entered MY field of expertise , since I'm a mechanic) :
When I order a filled toolbox at the hardware-store , I recieve it neatly arranged by tool-type : wrenches in one compartment , screwdrivers in another , files and hacksaws yet another compartment , and so on.
With Linux , it looks like the toolbox is filled with a dumpster ; everything is thrown in there haphazardly without any specific order(with a minor exeption for the libs , but even there I noticed several inconsistencies).

Is this clear enough for you , or do you need pictures with it?

You can turn the dog off - I hated it too.

The filesystem is a bit random sometimes and I'd agree that things could be a little more logical, but not /opt/program. /opt is the dumbest directory in there. That's what /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are for. I think it's actually just for stuff like KDE and Netscape and stuff that (at one time) were not open source. I've never had mozilla in /opt as far as I can recall.

What I'd like to see is fewer apps sticking stuff away in /foo/foo/foo/foo/share or /foo/foo/foo/foo/foo/lib when it should be in a /bin or an /etc or what have you. And I'd like essential CLI apps exclusively in /bin and /sbin, with non-system apps in /usr/bin and with gui apps exclusively in /X11/bin... though that may be intended for literal X apps rather than gui apps in general, which often end up in /usr/bin. Flipside is, I do like how KDE is pretty well quarantined and wish all the gnome crap would get cleaned up and tucked away instead of scrambled up. I wouldn't even have KDE or Gnome but I use a Gnome app or two and and a KDE and it was too much trouble for me to try and figure out what parts of the damn IDEs I needed to make the apps work. There, too, in packaging, I'd like a clearer separation of what's a trivial gnome-needs-this-to-make-a-button lib and what's a without-this-your-Gnome-app-crashes lib.

But yocompia's got it exactly right - with some initiative you can take more charge of your fs and 'locate' and 'which' freaking rule. The problem with /opt/app is the path - you'd need a path a meg long to run everything. A few bins gets around that. It doesn't matter where the app is as long as it's on your path. The only reason Windows gets away with C:\Program Files is because everything's a desktop shortcut or Start Menu item. And there, having the config files and libraries and binaries all scrambled up is a royal pain. Config files? Well, not with the evil registry but many programs do still carry various files that are variable, yet are stuck in Program Files instead of a nice /etc directory.

Now, what really bugs me is /home. If you're not careful, some apps try to make *visible* directories in /home, which may be uppercase *or* lowercase and gets all mixed in with your personal directories. I'd like an /etc in /home where all the dot files live, personally, but I haven't gotten around to trying to make that happen. But it's nowhere near as bad as 'C:\Documents and Settings\Desktop\Name\Application Data\Miscellaneous Incoherent Directories'.

As far as those who care to begin with, everybody's got their own ideas of where crap should go and nobody's going to be happy with any directory structure they haven't personally designed. But the logic of the *nix structure is pretty good - it could just be trimmed down and more consistent. But I wouldn't want to see it much different just because people can't type 'locate'.

As I can't disagree its not regardling Linux, the reasons its been moved is for the following:

Its not a specific so-called "technical" question. More of a General type question made to start a discussion regarding the aspects of Linux to developers that create the distro's to change the way they design and create their distributions of Linux; and not to solve a problem you are having with your own system and so on, etc.

That's the reason it has been moved to General, where discussions of non-Linux and even Linux related can be discussed as these types of discussions can get more political in a way and not technical.

Regards.

oh, mega, last time i checked, you can uninstall something in about ~20 seconds if it's in such an irritating spot and then reinstall it with the path you want, or you could switch to a distro that has a better file system setup.

what is it you're doing that makes finding the files associated with a given program so brutally important? i just have stuff in my $PATH, and i run it. if something vital is not in my $PATH, then i just add it. and let's not undervalue the use of those commands you classified as being a "last resort".

no pictures required, as i can read text quite well. perhaps YOU should try reading some text: man-pages on find, locate, whereis and which.

Hmmm... I don't have anything in /opt Maybe it's your distro...
But I do have all my tools in a molded case, ammo tin, tool box I outgrew years ago...
It may not be pretty but I can usually find what I need...

blinker, your sig is hilarious. if only you were good friends with marc rich or the russian mob.

I've been studying up on how to become an Evil Overlord too...
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

you could always create your own distro then you could have everything how you like it and who knows it might even catch on and one day youll get rich off the support and all the linux geeks will hate you for being pure and call your system bloated and get seriously pissed off saying your changing the flavor of everything...but that would probly take a while...

A while back, I used to think the same way. I loved linux, but the filesystem layout go to be confusing. Just spend some more time with it, you'll get used to thing.

IIRC, I have (for the fun of it) trimmed things down to:

/bin
/boot
/sbin
/usr/bin
/usr/doc
/usr/home
/usr/sbin

It can be done. The ones you generally can't change without a LOT of kernel hacking are bin & sbin

Hem:
General is for rants, discussions, "name my dog" etc.
Linux General is for technical linux questions that don't seem to fit in any of the other Linux sub forums.

titanium_geek

titanium, is that the lunatic fringe BBS (back around mid-nineties) from a chicago suburb? i may be completely off...

no...
just a random thought

titanium_geek