2 ms·

Sounds like OP's assertion is that with 3rd party packages installing into /usr/bin, things are mingled to an extent that upgrades (even with a package manager)

Sounds like OP's assertion is that with 3rd party packages installing into /usr/bin, things are mingled to an extent that upgrades (even with a package manager) cannot be cleanly completed, and (perhaps?) disk partitioning can't be done effectively (eg in the case where your 3P app is an absolute disk hog). I personally accept the second claim more than the first. UNIX used to have stronger standards here (eg /opt, /opt/etc, /usr/local, and so on) but I'm not sure if Linux ever followed such standards. And disk partitioning seems to have gone the way of the dodo these days.

alerighi 4y ago
If everything is managed by the package manager, there is a database of files that are installed, and assuming the package manager works correctly it shouldn't create any problems. I use installations made 10 years ago and they are perfectly fine! Different is for software that is not installed by the package manager, that in Linux is typically installed in /usr/local (if we talk about stuff that is compiled, or installed by another package manager such as pip or npm) or to /opt (for proprietary applications distributed as a binary).