I hate to jump in on this thread, but I strongly believe that "official" Debian packages should not install stuff into /opt or /usr/local. It's just a matter of "turf" as far as I'm concerned. Anybody using a Debian system knows that the FSSTND directories are the "turf" of dpkg and the Debian supplied packages. Likewise, /opt, /usr/local, plus non-FSSTND directories are the "turf" of the local sysadmin, and dpkg should stay out. There are no rules for the sharing of "turf" (except that dpkg can make empty directories in /usr/local). Any Debian package that is going to break these rules and intrude into the sysadmin's "turf" is only looking for trouble. Those are pretty simple rules -- I'm not in favour of complicating them. If the KDE project has decided that everything "must go under /opt or /usr/local, or else..." - then what is the point of making a Debian package? If it's already available as an RPM or a tarball that installs into /opt or /usr/local, then it doesn't conflict with the Debian packaging system. I must admit, I'm much more partial to the Gnome project than KDE. The Gnome folks seem like they "get it" as far as the GNU environment, openness, licensing, and (unwritten) rules goes. On the other hand, the KDE guys seem to have adopted a more "our way or the highway", and "to h*ll with the other guys" approach. This is reflected (for example) by the fact that KDE wants you to use their window manager to run their apps, whereas Gnome apps (ie. the GIMP) will run on all window managers. About the only thing I find exciting about KDE is that it may contain a bunch of code that might be "stealable" for Gnome. (Ooh, I almost sound bitter there) :-) Cheers, - Jim
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