/usr versus /opt [LWN.net]

/usr versus /opt

Posted Aug 19, 2002 16:15 UTC (Mon) by samadhi (guest, #2434)
In reply to: /usr versus /opt by Deno
Parent article: The first three LSB-certified distributions

I am not spouting SUSE PR as you put it, in fact the only reason I knew about this was when I swapped from SUSE to Mandrake about 2 years ago all the files had moved. When I READ the FHS I interpreted the line :
Programs to be invoked by users must be located in the directory /opt/<package>/bin
to mean exactly that. I suppose this could depend on your definition of what classes as a standard part of the distribution and what classes as optional software.

The definition I have always seen implemented on POSIX compliant UNIX systems would mean that software such as Office suites, Java, browsers etc should reside in /opt as this is optional software that is not necessary for the distribution to work.

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