linux application installation?
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 at
07:23
hi actually i want to know where the applications get installed on linux. like in windows..its in C:\Program files\…. but what abt in linux. like i m installing Mplayer or anything..where does it get installed? what is the proper way of uninstalling it? please help.
Tagged with: c program • Linux • mplayer • program files
Filed under: Linux Applications
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Unlike windows in linux files get put all over the place. For the most part they are installed in the usr directory. the execute file is stored in the bin or in /usr/sbin directories.
as for uninstalling them, that depends on how you installed it. if you used an rpm then it is easy, if you installed from source thats hard you just have to delete every file associated with the program. but with an rpm you can use the rpm command to remove the program. if you are using a installation program like yum or yast then you can remove it that way.
/usr/bin
In linux you can install programs whereever you want.
It is completely under your control. If you like a
Windows style program directory, you can create one
and install all your programs there. Otherwise, you
can pick and choose where each program installs at the
time of installation. If a program is supposed to be
used by many (even all) users of the machine, it is
customary to put it in a directory, which is usually
included in everybody’s environment variable PATH,
such as /usr, or /usr/local, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin.
But doing so is not a requirement, it’s a matter of taste.
(If you use c-shell or t-shell you can check your
PATH by typing ‘printenv PATH’ (without the quotes.)
You can also change it to be something else.)
There is one other big difference in program installation.
In Windows, the installed programs modify a very special
directory called "registry", which most users are not even
aware of. In linux, there is no registry at all. A
program does not have to register with OS in order to be
able to execute. This makes the process of installation
and uninstallation much simpler in Linux. You can simply
remove the executable and all the directories that
executable has modified (the directories where its files
and data resides) the program is gone! In windows, in
contrast, this does not remove the program, you also have
to clean up the registry, which is a mess.