So where are programs installed?
I was playing with Linux the other day and installed something and was tearing my hair out trying to find where the exe or whatever was to launch the damn program.
None of the folders made any sense to me.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
So where are programs installed?
I was playing with Linux the other day and installed something and was tearing my hair out trying to find where the exe or whatever was to launch the damn program.
None of the folders made any sense to me.
It should be in /bin or /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin. You can use "which" command to know
or /opt, or a binary in some hidden folder in /home...
Same as Windows and MacOS, really. You can follow best practices and conventions, or just install your software wherever you want.
I guess the problem is that app developers write the installers, and they suck at following conventions. Obligatory fuck Snap, as it creates a folder in the home dir, and it doesn't even bother to hide it, and it is not even reconfigurable.
I have always wondered why there was a developer folder(/dev)
Now i know that the government is trying to make people think it stands for something else so they can replace all programmers with advanced random number generators
I think it's probably useful to mention the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) here which describes most of the tree structure detailed in the diagram.
The directory layout mostly adopted by most distros evolved over time though, with major differences existing in how distros view usage of different parts of the filesystem, making it more of a standard that documents how the filesystem is laid out rather than one that defines it.
On a personal note, I hated /run for the longest time, thinking it a pointless, redundant quirk that exacerbated inconsistencies across distros. More recently though, I've come to value a space that is now (mostly) implemented consistently as a tmpfs mount from which to handle runtime data.
Why is /mnt a "temporary" mounting point? I alwags put my permanent ones there. I'd say /media is temporary...
Just forwarded this pic to my dad. I'll be guiding him in installing Mint on one of his old Windows desktops this coming Saturday! Wish us luck in the coming years 😂
This image is misinformation. That's not a filesystem, that's a layout standard called the FHS. Filesystems are FAT32, BTRFS, EXT4, etc.
Thank you for that, I always wondered about the meaning behind a few of these directories.