Question of the day -- helpful for newbies?

[Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster]

> > 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>.

But aren't there some packages that want to install to specific parts of the
tree, that require certain pathnames?  Something I played with a short while
ago seemed to do that.  Of course, I tend to be twiddling with system
software as opposed to end-user stuff.