I am accustomed to windows install file structures (for a lack of better words) where installed programs go usually under one directory "program files" and they are kept together in an organized for the most part directories.

linux - being new abeit seemsto have like stuff installed in a couple places. i was wondering when install programs and you are prompted to install a program and its in your home directory do you as a user install it there or do you guys install programs in a /usr/local/ directory to keeep a common place.

it seems things are repeated in mulitple places granted some are are symlinks or what have you but i don't know...


its more of a question of habits or practices that i am curious about.
was wondering if someone could shed some light on this preference issue.

i use /usr and /usr/local for most stuff, but if i expect its
something i may not want to keep or something huge,
and i don't want to forget i installed it, i put it in /opt.
currently in opt i have intels c compiler, 2 versions of
kde, a few versions of wine, several cvs projects
including mozilla, among other things.

Yeah, /usr/ is the default directory for a lot of installs so I stick with that or /usr/local/

Here's an article on the FHS: http://www.freeos.com/articles/3102/ (formerly known as FSSTND, IIRC) which mentions http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ as the source of it all.