I've seen very few programs over the years that installed by default to the /opt directory. Which is somewhat puzzling since the /opt directory is there specifically for add-on software. I've recently decided to get serious about how I maintain my system and part of that is doing a better job of tracking and segregating the software. So I set up my new system with /opt on its own partition. The idea being that any superficial software I install will go there. But I'm curious to hear if others are doing this. What kind of adjustments have you made? Do you duplicate the /usr directory tree? Or do you just put the binaries in /opt and send everything else to the typical locations?

I still plan to put base programs in /usr. It would get too confusing trying to point programs to dependencies in multiple locations. So 'infrastructure' type programs will stay in the PATH.

It's useful if you're an administrator, not much on your own PC. Have a look at Unix stack exchange.

Yes, I do.

So no consensus anywhere. Interesting. Thanks for the link, that was educational.

Hi,
VirtualBox, Vivaldi, libreoffice

cheers
pete

There is a whole lot less there than in times past, me thinks.

I'll probably end up shrinking that partition. No way I'm going to install enough to fill it.

I think it was Linux that put /opt out of business. Originally, back in the Unix days, all applications went into /opt because they were not part of Unix: they were bought separately. Once you had Linux distributions, it made sense of /opt to be reserved for just the programs that you didn't get with the distro. Nowadays, even if you compile from source, most programs are designed to install in /usr by default. I have only one thing in /opt: the Samsung printer software.

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On Linux, I've seen /opt used by quite a few non-packaged applications. I think at one time, Processing used it for its "generic Linux" install, and the Foundry apps (Nuke, Mari, Modo, Katana) still use it, I think, and I believe Adobe Air uses it. I could be utterly wrong on ALL these, and maybe they only used /opt because I told them to, during install... but I figured it's worth mentioning because the question wasn't "does any upstream project use /opt by default", just whether or not anyone uses it. So yes, I use it, either willfully or because some application defaults to it.

Slackbuilds.org occasionally uses /opt, too; usually for pre-compiled installs (Blender, LibreOffice; big apps that nobody wants to build). That's what I tend to use /opt for, as well.

and it works real good there, also.

I use /opt for some applications, particularly larger (e.g. Android Studio/sdk) ones that don't really need to be taking up my ssd space. I've found applications (at least, some of them) that I install outside of my package manager default to /opt. I use Arch linux

I use /opt for company programs - Centos/RHEL/Debian. Anything that isn't part of the standard install or built from source goes into /opt. Anything that is required for it to run is put into /opt/'packagename'/require.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-...FTWAREPACKAGES

I use opt for a few things, but not much.

I didn't choose /opt, but mine contains TeamViewer, Google Chrome, and Calibre (ebook management).

I use /opt -- the Google applications, mentioned above, aside I install Mozilla's Nightly browser and some Second Life clients in there. I'm not sure whether it's strictly used for but I put non-preinstalled and largely self-contained binaries there.