Anders Johansson wrote:
There is a standard called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) which you can find at http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
It says, briefly, that if you're installing software that doesn't come from your OS vendor, then you should install it in either /opt or /usr/local
The main reason for this is to ease upgrades. An upgrade is free, according to the standard, to totally erase any directories except /home, /opt, /srv and /usr/local
Charles Philip Chan wrote:
To elaborate on that, usually for small programs and programs that you don't expect to have multiple versions one should install them in /usr/local. For larger programs and systems of programs (such as KDE or Gnome), one should install them in /opt.
This is a great list, and I appreciate the information. For those of us that spent years with the other OS, the Linux learning curve can be a bit of a challenge. This list goes a long way toward easing the burden. Thanks. Rem