* Steve Lamb said: > > Why is placing third-party bianary packages in /opt a bad thing? > > Because /opt is a duplication of an existing file structure which can > serve the purpose more than adequately. What people are asking me is "what is > wrong with /opt" when I am pointing out is that there is nothing wrong with > /usr/local, or /usr/opt with a /usr/local/opt counterpart. I do not see the > need of a whole new top-level directory. As usually, you weren't listening. Somebody in this thread has said why it is good to use /opt for third-party (usually commercial) packages:
/usr - controlled by Debian /usr/local - controlled by *me* - a local admin /opt - controlled by *them* - the commercial vendors Can't you really see the difference between *local* packages and those you cannot control (the commercial ones)? If a commercial package was compiled with /opt in mind (it was a case with older SO, AFAIR) and you don't have access to sources nor any way to reconfigure it to use a different tree, then you HAVE to put it in /opt. And doing the symlink messing is pointless. marek
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