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I put such software in /opt/progname, where progname is whatever program you're installing; that way it's easy to delete when I need to update it. Since I use Ubuntu and have tens of thousands of software packages already available, the only stuff that goes in here is development and proprietary stuff. As a result, it's either never changing (proprietary like JBuilder and CMAP Tools) or always changing (Sylpheed development branch, Emacs Unicode 2 from CVS). Sticking such things into /opt/emacs makes it easy to just wipe it out completely when it's time to fetch and compile again. Of course, you have to add a lot of directories to your search and man paths, but I think it can save a lot of headaches later.
Distribution: Ubuntu, Debian, Various using VMWare
Posts: 2,088
Rep:
You should put them in either /opt/progName or /usr/local/progName, where progName is the name of the program. It is a good idea if you are doing this to make sure all the programs directories are in either of the above, and then create a symbolic link to the executable in /usr/bin.
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