[ILUG] Does anybody use /opt?

[Ronan Cunniffe]

Hi all,

<rant>
   Okay, I've just spent half an hour (probably less, feels like more)
grepping and sedding and excising bits of one of my users' configs so that
he can log in, finding all the instances of /opt/somewhere/somebinary, and
replacing it (with increasing irritation) with '/usr/bin'.

   On the other hand, the Filesystem Heirarchy Standard says all "third
party" apps go in /opt.  The "rationale" given for this at:

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#REQUIREMENTS7 or thereabouts
boils down to:

    "The use of /opt for add-on software is a well-established practice in
     the UNIX community."

Now that, as a "rationale" is bollocks, if only because a rationale is
supposed to be a logical argument for something, and the above doesn't
even try.  I am found /opt a PITA to deal with when there were SlackWare
boxes on our system, and now it's a *royal* PITA to get rid of.

</rant>

So what's the point of /opt?

Ronan