Seems like a noob question to me.

I've been trying to learn what all the folders/directories in the linux hierarchy are for. I've found a few good references that have answered most of my quesitons (including FHS (URL removed) )

What I still don't completely understand is the difference between usr and usr/local The references state that usr/local is for "local binaries and libraries" seems circular to me, since I can imagine a couple of meanings for local in this instance. I understand that usr could be on a local drive or a network drive (or ROM or anything really), does that mean that usr/local should be a local drive if usr is remote?

Thanks,
Micah

Imagine a university network, using NIS and the
machine you have at your paws basically gets
everything from an NFS server somewhere on
campus ... there maybe a need for you to have
executables that others won't need. That's where
/usr/local comes into the picture :)

These days, however, the separation often takes
place to allow you to preserve your stuff compiled
from source in case you feel the urge to delete
the underlying distro ... in this case it would be a
clever move to have /usr/local on a separate
partition.


Cheers,
Tink

Okay, that makes sense.

Two more minor questions arose while looking at this stuff. What is /opt really for. Some of the docs I read just say it for "large applications packages", packages like what?

And according to the FHS, compliant systems shouldn't have folders under /mnt. So where RH8 (and others I'm sure) put /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/floppy, FHS recommends putting those in /media. Obviously it's my system, I can mount wherever I wish, but I was curious if distros are starting to move towards FHS or is FHS just a moving target?

Thanks for the help,
Micah

Ummm ... under Slack for instance KDE got
installed there, with > 150MB I'd consider it
major :)
cdrtools by Schilly will install into /opt if you
don't tweak them, even though that's not a
huge package.

As for the /mnt, /media in FHS (or FHS in general)
I don't give an owl's hoot ;} ... I use what works
for me, and what I grew up with, I guess I don't
expect others to get along well with my systems :D ...
I don't know what other distro's are doing :}

My /cdrom lives under / (root) because I like
it that way - same for external devices like my
camera.


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for the answers. I realize that Linux and unix in general is really flexible about everything, including layout. Which is both cool and strange coming from my background.

Micah