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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.

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What is the /opt directory? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've seen a lot of self-hosted software wanting to store their data in /opt, is there any reason why?

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[–] atzanteol 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I was wondering about that too... According to the spec:

/home is a fairly standard concept, but it is clearly a site-specific filesystem. The setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no program should assume any specific location for a home directory, rather it should query for it.

Sometimes home directories are in other locations. My University used to have different mount points for different graduating classes on our Unix servers. And I use "/home2" for one of my servers for... reasons.

Though I'm not sure that qualifies as "deprecated"? I get the "non-standard" bit though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

You also have to consider that roots homedir is in /root and not home, so if you'd just assume it's /home/$USER you'd get in trouble when your programm is run or compiled as root.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How about $HOME, is it standardized?

[–] captain_aggravated 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

$HOME is a shell variable, created by the shell as it starts, reading from the /etc/passwd file. It's a string, not a symlink or anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I mean about the 'should query for it' part.

[–] atzanteol 1 points 5 months ago

For the currently logged-in user it's fine, yes. It should always be set.