[ale] /USR vs. /USR/LOCAL

JK jknapka at kneuro.net
Thu May 29 18:21:05 EDT 2008


To a first order of approximation, /usr is for "standard"
stuff, and /usr/local is for "site specific" stuff --
third-party software not shipped with the OS.

-- JK

Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On Thu May 29 2008, Marc Ferguson wrote:
>> *What is the difference between /usr and /usr/local?
>> *
>> I'm very excited that my wife has finally joined the linux community
>> (through openSUSE 10.3).  Now that I have to hold her hand for almost
>> everything she does with the system, she asks lots of questions and /usr
>> vs. /usr/local totally stumps me.  I thought I knew, but trying to explain
>> it to her helped me realize that I don't know the difference.  Thanks.
> 
> well, I can tell you that I just found out a few differences, and Debian-users 
> helped me out..
> I was trying to figure out why gnupg wouldn't install from Debian, and why it 
> wouldn't work with kmail. Kmail kept saying the /usr/bin/gnupg wasn't 
> installed right. well, I had done a source install, and it installed 
> to /usr/local/bin :)
> 
> so I can tell you at least that some source packages ( on Debian..) install 
> to /usr/local, when the Debian packages install to /usr/bin .
> 
> 


-- 
I do not particularly want to go where the money is -
  it usually does not smell nice there. -- A. Stepanov


More information about the Ale mailing list