Hi All,

I've been using slackware on and off over the years and have always wondered, what are the all the various directories used for?

Well, a quick read of slackware's site and I understood the basic idea. But, I am still a bit confused on how to keep everything straight as I build my linux workstation.

For instance, when I download source, where should I put it? Should I compile it into a certain directory, or will the app. create it's own? (This may depend on the app. I realize). Also, how about packages, where should they go in order to remain organized?

Finally, just curious, why bother with /usr/bin and /bin? I realize the difference, but a binary is a binary? Why not have them in under one branch? I mean, it gets pretty confusing when developers release applications whose installations vary from one to the next, and place files and symlinks all over the place...

Anyways, I guess I am looking for a good read on the above.


Thanks,


csnow

Have a look at the File Heirarchy Standard (FHS) at http://www.pathname.com/fhs/. It brings order to what can look like chaos at first.

Lyle

Take a look at this section from the rute book. It might help some. I'm at that point also where it sometimes seems like file locations is a crap shoot. Hopefully my LFS project will help clear that up some for me.

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/node20.html.gz

Here's a small snippet from that:

"Each package will install under one of these superstructures, meaning that it will unpack many files into various subdirectories of the superstructure. "

please read the package building howto at

http://www.linuxpackages.net/

that is if you want to install things the slack way

It explains the basics of building a slackware package correctly along with how to install things in the right place.