On Friday, 9 בMarch 2012 15:41:14 Omer Zak wrote: > On Fri, 2012-03-09 at 10:31 +0200, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > > > Note that /opt is intended for software (and data) that is not a part > > of the system/distro, is installed in a non-standard way, etc. This is > > something you may want to keep intact, e.g., when you upgrade the base > > system. > > What, then, is the difference between /opt and /usr/local?
Under /opt, each application has its own private "namespace", i.e: /opt/foobar/bin, /opt/foobar/sbin, /opt/foobar/lib, etc. The /usr/local namespace is common to eventhing installed there. Originally (mid 80's), /usr/local was used for everyhing which wasn't vendor supplied. However, this had two problems: * No distinction between locally developed apps/scripts and 3'rd parties. * Major application had a lot of components and it wasn't a good idea to mix them with each other (e.g: have /usr/local/bin contain binaries from several major applications) So under SVR4 /opt was invented to solve these two problems. The importance of these techniques faded when Linux shifted into a "package" driven world. When we speek of free software there is no 3'rd parties -- we are all 1'st party. (OK, so there are proprietary applications for Linux and it's common to put them under /opt, and rightfully so because they really behave like the bad old 3'rd party software of the 80's... :-) Bye, -- Oron Peled Voice: +972-4-8228492 [email protected] http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron A train stops at a trainstation, a bus stops at a bustation, what happens at a workstation?" _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
