What goes where?

[dano2]

Windows has an "Add/Remove programs" list and a Program Files Folder that makes it easy to see what software has been installed. With Linux, it seems programs/commands are scattered around everywhere. It could have saved me tons of time when trying to set my clock had a I known /usr/bin/dateconfig even existed, but someone had to tell me it was there.

So, my questions are: With Linux, is there a quick way of listing all of the programs/commands that are available to me? I know I could run "ls -la /usr/bin/" but I notice some are in "ls -la /usr/sbin/" too. Anywhere else? Is there some logical reasoning behind what goes where that I'm just missing? Is that reasoning constant across distros? And I know there is the man command for looking up an individual program's details, but is there a way of getting a little details summary for each program while in a list?

thanks
Dan

[DrChuck]

Best way of seeing what is installed is with your package installer/manager, which differs across the distributions. So my first question to you is, what distribution are you using? Fedora, for example, uses yum to manage the rpm packages by default, but many of us prefer apt-get. There are gui front-ends for these managers as well, like yumex and synaptic.
I would have to say that package management on linux is far better than on windows. With linux you can see every installed component, and update them individually. A windows installation is a tad more monolithic ...

[ladoga]

I think organization in *nix is much clearer than one in windows (where executables are scattered pretty much everywhere /Dos, /Windows, /Win32, /WinNT depending on version of windows installed IIRC /System32 /Program Files and whatever user chosen directories.

If you want something like add/remove programs (only much much more powerful) look for synaptic in apt/deb based distros (debian, ubuntu etc.) or yum in rpm based distros.

here is how i understand the linux structure for storing executable files:

/bin and /sbin store core system executables like gnu tools. (ls, mkdir etc. /sbin stands for superuser)

/usr/bin and /usr/sbin store executables installed by the package manager

/usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin store executables installed by user (ie. make install), which usually is self compiled programs.

[happybunny]

dano2: the add/remove programs does not list everything in Windows, just those apps that adhere to the standard of listing in add/remove programs, but i get your point.

And i agree with the others....use your distributions package manage to install things and it wont be a problem.

on debian, you can use dpkg -l to list all the apps that it has installed.

on RH/Fedora and maybe SUSE, rpm -qa will list things that it has installed.

But, like Windows, only those packages you install using these tools will be listed in these tools, so if you install things outside of the normal process (which is common), the tools will be un-aware of them.

[je_fro]

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/ref-guide/s1-filesystem-fhs.html

[happybunny]

and an even more insanely detailed one:

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

[dano2]

wow. I think I like this forum. Lots of helpful responses quickly. Thanks for the tips everyone.


-Dan
WHM 10.8.0 cPanel 10.9.0-R7965
RedHat Enterprise 4 i686 - WHM X v3.1.0