Simple HowTo

[Les Mikesell]

Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> 
> I hope I am not off-topic, but one thing that sorta bothers
> me is that many, if not *most* applications are being placed
> in /usr/share as if a catchall place?  It seems to contain more
> than 50% of /usr space alone?

The point of /usr/share is supposed to be that you can share it - as a 
read-only network mount - for many machines.  I'm not sure how that 
plays out in practice or what happens when you install packages on the 
machines with read-only mounts.

> It seems to me, that many applications such as 'games' for example,
> ought to be in it's own common directory such as /usr/(local/)games
> so that these (large) applications can be easily symlinked/mounted
> elsewhere if need be, otherwise it can be bothersome to move, mount,
> or symlink these otherwise potentially large applications?
> 
> I wonder what the point is of having /usr/games, /usr/local if
> no one seems to use these otherwise mostly empty directories?

/usr/local is for your own source installs, so as not to conflict with 
packaged installs.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com