While both are designed to contain files not belonging to the operating system,
All files under
On the other hand,
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11544/what-is-the-difference-between-opt-and-usr-local
/opt
and /usr/local
are not intended to contain the same set of files./usr/local
is a place to install files built by the administrator, typically by using the make
command (e.g., ./configure; make; make install
).
The idea is to avoid clashes with files that are part of the operating
system, which would either be overwritten or overwrite the local ones
otherwise (e.g., /usr/bin/foo
is part of the OS while /usr/local/bin/foo
is a local alternative).All files under
/usr
are shareable between OS instances,
although this is rarely done with Linux. This is a part where the FHS
is slightly self-contradictory, as /usr
is defined to be read-only, but /usr/local/bin
needs to be read-write for local installation of software to succeed.
The SVR4 file system standard, which was the FHS' main source of
inspiration, is recommending to avoid /usr/local
and use /opt/local
instead to overcome this issue./usr/local
is a legacy from the original BSD. At that time, the source code of /usr/bin
OS commands were in /usr/src/bin
and /usr/src/usr.bin
, while the source of locally developed commands was in /usr/local/src
, and their binaries in /usr/local/bin
. There was no notion of packaging (outside tarballs).On the other hand,
/opt
is a directory for installing
unbundled packages (i.e. packages not part of the Operating System
distribution, but provided by an independent source), each one in its
own subdirectory. They are already built whole packages provided by an
independent third party software distributor. Unlike /usr/local
stuff, these packages follow the directory conventions (or at least they should). For example, someapp
would be installed in /opt/someapp
, with one of its command being /opt/someapp/bin/foo
, its configuration file would be in /etc/opt/someapp/foo.conf
, and its log files in /var/opt/someapp/logs/foo.access
.https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11544/what-is-the-difference-between-opt-and-usr-local