Subj : Re: Where should installed programs go? To : comp.os.linux From : robertharvey Date : Sat Aug 07 2004 07:50 am news@scottbell.org (Scott Bell) wrote in message news:... > Where should programs go that I install? I've just installed Firefox > but it asks me where I want to install to, I've installed it in the > directory /usr/bin/firefox/ and created a launcher to > /usr/bin/firefox/firefox but although this works I'm not sure if this > is the correct way to install software. > > Most of the software I already have can be launched from the bash > prompt (eg. mozilla) by typing the program name but this won't work > with Firefox unless I type firefox/firefox. What should I be doing so > this works with Firefox? Well, /usr/bin/firefox/ is not down your executable path. So you can create a link in any directory that is. cd /usr/bin ln -s /usr/bin/firefox/firefox firefox chmod +x firefox (the last line is probably superflous). This is what I have done on quite a lot of installs In answer to your main question: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html is quite a good summary of modern thinking, although there are still religious wars over the use of /opt, /usr/local/bin and the like. FHS is not the only standard, there is also "The Standard Linux Directory Structure" for example, which does things slightly differently. .