>> In my opinion, the installation guide should suggest creating
>> an /opt partition if the user intends to install commercial
>> software like Applixware, Civilization or the Oracle RDBMS, but
>> nothing else should be done.
> What problem is solved by not providing the skeleton
> directories?
You suggest creating the following directories by default:
/etc/opt, /opt/bin, /opt/doc, /opt/include, /opt/info, /opt/lib,
/opt/man and /var/opt.
Firstly, none of the existing applications that go to /opt use these
directories. For example, the version of Applixware that SuSE ships
goes to /opt/applix and is started with /usr/bin/X11/applixware.
There's neither a need for the directories you suggest nor for
symbolic links in /opt/bin.
Secondly, linking to /opt/bin is a bad idea anyway. For example,
there are often several versions of the Oracle RDBMS on one machine.
The directory hierarchy usually looks like this:
/opt/oracle/product/7.3.2
/opt/oracle/product/8.0.5
/opt/oracle/product/dev2000
In each of these directory trees the executable sqlplus may exist.
To which one do you link?
It should be up to the user to decide which directory she wants to put
in her path.
