Where to place shared media (music and videos)?
 

What is the best location for shared media files like music, video, books, etc.? I have had mine in /media, but reading about the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html), I realise that it's sometimes used for removeable media. I love standards, and would prefer to have my media stored in a standardised catalog. Also, placing it in my home catalog would keep it out of reach from other users on the same system.

Ideas?

I've worked as a design, systems, and reliability engineer for 20+ years in heavily standards-oriented industries (nuclear, aerospace, defense). I've never seen a standard complied with 100% because no standard encompasses 100% of the possible design requirements. The FHS is no different; it doesn't seem to address shared multimedia. I put my multimedia files in /multimedia/music and /multimedia/video. I then include /multimedia as a Samba share so everyone in the house can access the files.

Just create a new directory and put it wherever you want. Name it "multimedia" or "sharedfiles" or whatever and set it up so that everyone has read access to it. If possible, it's best to put everything on a separate partition or disk so that you won't lose it if you ever have to reinstall your system or something.

I personally have my multimedia files on a separate HDD, mounted under /mnt, symlinked to my user's home directory and shared via nfs to my second computer.