Question of the day -- helpful for newbies?

[Mike Coleman]

"Duston, Hal" <hdusto01 at sprintspectrum.com> writes:
> My understanding is that you should put things you 
> are adding to your system in /usr/local.

I second that.  I unroll source tarballs in /usr/local/src, and install the
results in /usr/local/{bin,lib,etc}, etc.  For the occasional binary tarball
that wants to be installed in a single place, I usually put it in
/usr/local/<package>.

I also keep my personal home directories (as opposed to ones the system
creates, like /home/ftp) under /usr/local/home, which may be a trifle
unusual.  I keep /usr/local on a separate partition, and that way I can
reinstall the distribution at any time without messing up non-distribution
stuff.  Or even run several distributions at once, all mounting the same
/usr/local.

--Mike

-- 
Mike Coleman, mkc at mathdogs.com
  http://www.mathdogs.com -- problem solving, expert software development