I thought I’ll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!
I’ll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!
I thought I’ll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!
I’ll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!
Why do programs install somewhere instead of asking me where to?
Because Linux and the programs themselves expect specific files to be placed in specific places, rather than bunch of files in a single program directory like you have in Windows or (hidden) MacOS.
If you compile programs yourself you can choose to put things in different places. Some software is also built to be more self contained, like the Linux binaries of Firefox.
Actually, windows puts 95% of it files in a single directory, and sometimes you get a surprise DLL in your \system[32] folder.
Someone already gave an answer, but the reason it’s done that way is because on Linux, generally programs don’t install themselves - a package manager installs them. Windows (outside of the windows store) just trusts programs to install themselves, and include their own uninstaller.
Expanding on the other explanations. On Windows, it’s fairly common for applications to come with a copy of everything they use in the form of DLL files, and you end up with many copies of various versions of those.
On Linux, the package manager manages all of that. So if say, an app needs GTK, then the package manager makes sure GTK is also installed. And since your distribution’s package manager manages everything and mostly all from source code, you get a version of the app specifically compiled for that version of GTK the distribution provides.
So if we were to do it kind of the Windows way, it would very, very quickly become a mess because it’s not just one big self contained package you drop in
C:\Program Files. Linux follows the FSH which roughly defines where things should be. Binaries go to/usr/bin, libraries to/usr/lib, shared files go to/usr/shared. A bunch of those locations are somewhat special, for example .desktop files in/usr/share/applicationsshow up in the menu to launch them. That said Linux does have a location for big standalone packages: that’s usually/opt.There’s advantages and inconveniences with both methods. The Linux way has the advantage of being able to update libraries for all apps at once, and reduce clutter and things are generally more organized. You can guess where an icon file will be located most of the time because they all go to the same place, usually with a naming convention as well.
you install program A, it needs and installs libpotato then later you install program B that depends on libfries, and libfries depends on libpotato, however since you already have libpotato installed, only program B and libfries are installed The intelligence behind this is called a package manager
In windows when you install something, it usually installs itself as a standalone thing and complains/reaks when dependencies are not met - e.g having to install Visual C++ 2005-202x for games, JRE for java programs etc
instead of making you install everything that you need to run something complex, the package manager does this for you and keep tracks of where files are
and each package manager/distribution has an idea of where some files be stored
Because dependencies. You also should not be installing things you download of the internet nor should you use install scripts.
The way you install software is your distros package manager or flatpak
I wish every single app installed in the same directory. Would make life so much easier.
They do!
/binhas the executables, and/usr/sharehas everything else.Not all. I’ve had apps install in opt, flatpaks install in var out of all places. Some apps install in /etc/share/applications
In
/etc? Are you sure?/usr/share/applicationshas your system-wide.desktopfiles, (while.local/share/applicationshas user-level ones, kinda analogous to installing a program toAppDataon Windows). And.desktopfiles could be interpreted at a high level as an “app”, even though they’re really just a simple description of how to advertise and launch an application from a GUI of some kind.OK, that was wrong. I meant usr/share/applications. Still, more than one place.
The actual executables shouldn’t ever go in that folder though.
Typically packages installed through a package manager stick everything in their own folder in
/usr/lib(for libs) and/usr/share(for any other data). Then they either put their executables directly in/usr/binor symlink over to them.That last part is usually what results in things not living in a consistent place. A package might have something that qualifies as both an executable and a lib, so they store it in their lib folder, but symlink to it from bin. Or they might not have a lib folder, and just put everything in their share folder and symlink to it from bin.
Apps and executables are similar but separate things. An app is concept used in GUI desktop environments. They are a user-friendly front end to one or more executable in
/usr/binthat is presented by the desktop environment (or app launcher) as a single thing. On Linux these apps are usually defined in a.desktopfile. The apps installed by the Linux distribution’s package manager are typically in/usr/share/applications, and each one points to one of the executables in/usr/binor/usr/libexec. You could even have two different “apps” launch a single executable, but each one using different CLI arguments to give the appearance of different apps.The desktop environment you use might be reconfigured to display apps from multiple sources. You might also install apps from FlatHub, Lutris, Nix, Guix, or any of several other package managers. This is analogous to how in the CLI you need to set the “
PATH” environment variable. If everything is configured properly (and that is not always the case), your desktop environment will show apps from all of these sources collected in the app launcher. Sometimes you have the same app installed by multiple sources, and you might wonder “why does Gnome shell show me OpenTTD twice?”For end users who install apps from multiple other sources besides the default app store, there is no easy solution, no one agreed-upon algorithm to keep things easy. Windows, Mac OS, and Android all have the same problem. But I have always felt that Linux (especially Guix OS) has the best solution, which is automated package management.