Creating shortcuts

[Nat Gross]

Paul Howarth wrote:

>On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 22:14 -0300, Leandro Melo wrote:
>  
>
<snip>

>Other people have answered your question regarding shortcuts, but I
>thought I'd mention that if you're installing non-RPM software on to
>your system, the best place for it to go is /usr/local/bin, not /usr
>(ideally, /usr/local would be a separate partition too, so that you can
>do a fresh install of the system, completely discarding the contents
>of /usr but still keeping /usr/local the way it is). Putting things
>in /usr runs the risk of them being overwritten by a subsequent
>installation of an RPM-based package (which almost invariably install
>into /usr).
>
>Paul.
>  
>
Two questions, please.
1. Is /opt as safe?
2. re: shortcuts. How do I get my link to display the true path? I have 
a symlink to /usr/share/xxx. When I browse this (also at a terminal 
prompt) , it shows the path as "/home/nat/Desktop/theLinkName", but many 
times I prefer to have it show the true path, "/usr/share/xxx".
Thanks;
-nat