Re: FHS question

[Todd Pytel <tppytel@sophrosune.org>]

Tom,

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 07:18:45 -0400
Tom Allison <tallison@tacocat.net> wrote:

> Wouldn't it be possible to utilize /opt for big packages (open office,
> 
> mozilla, KDE, Gnome, Java) and still leave /opt for system
> administrators?
> 
> I kind of like the idea of putting what you need for the basics in
> /usr and the cool applications in /opt and spread it around a little
> bit.

I can't speak for Debian, because I've only been using it about 6
months, but most of the big distributions used to do exactly what you
described - there would be /opt/gnome, /opt/kde, /opt/openoffice, and so
on.  What happened, especially as the projects became more mature, is
that a lot of cross-dependencies developed - Galeon used Mozilla, and
lots of things used GTK, for example.  Then the "tidy" directory
structure became a horrible mess for compile time configuration, the
$PATH variable stretched out for miles and required maintenance, and
basically the whole tidy structure only served to hide dependencies and
relationships that actually existed.  Better to toss everything in /usr
and forego human-readable browsing for the sake of an efficient system. 
Trust in the package manager to keep track of things for you.

--Todd