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LMDE - some programs installed to /opt ?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 7:36 am
by shalom938
I usually mount /opt to a drive I partition I have with all kind of stuff like my projects etc.
Today I install LMDE, then while creating a shortcut to thunderbird on my top panel I noticed that thunderbird is installed to /opt/thunderbird and /usr/bin/thunderbird is a link ??
shalom@shalom-laptop ~ $ ls -la /usr/bin/thunderbird
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Apr 15 08:55 /usr/bin/thunderbird -> /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird

then I noticed that there are other things in /opt like a folder named /opt/kde3 with bin,lib and lib64 under it,
a folder named /opt/debian with some deb files under it, a folder named mint-flashplugin-x64 ,

I wonder how did this happen? I never had the OS installing files to /opt, Usually I have a dual boot where both OS mount this drive to /opt, now my /opt has mint specific files in it.

Re: LMDE - some programs installed to /opt ?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:09 am
by AlbertP
/opt is treated as a 'Program Files' folder by some programs, e.g. Google programs and OpenOffice downloaded from its website (OpenOffice from the repository installs somewhere else, Google Earth from there may also do this).

Re: LMDE - some programs installed to /opt ?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:36 am
by amina
I useed to have the problem with Firefox that I could not start it with Run (Alt + F2). I found that Firefox was started from /opt...
I had to create a symlink so that the Run dialog box finds it ($PATH issue?).

Re: LMDE - some programs installed to /opt ?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 11:34 am
by CiaW
Basically and from what I can gather, /opt is used if you're installing something that is 'non-standard' to the main distro. In this case, since Debian's standard browser is iceweasel, a re-branded Firefox (which I'm using atm) and not the standard or Mint-y Firefox, the Mint version is in /opt. I just did a search and found this article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10704 it discusses using /opt vs /usr/local.

Re: LMDE - some programs installed to /opt ?

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:37 am
by shalom938
Yes, I just realized that after I wrote this post that thunderbird and firefox installed to /opt because they are not officially debian, personally I prefer third party to /usr/local.