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I'm quite new in Linux and I come from MacOS. I miss the easy to use Applications folder and I would like to know if there is a way to create an applications directory like in MacOS.

Since I have Ubuntu (19.10), I created a directory /opt because I found online that the apps installed from Internet are supposed to go there, but I had to create it since that does not exist anymore in Ubuntu 19.10. I think this is not a good way to do it, and I was thinking if it would be possible to create an Applications directory like in MacOS without giving up any functionality.

Any kind of help would have been appreciated, since I'm searching for this for months. Thanks in advance

0xFR
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1 Answers1

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When you add new apps using the Software Center, with a command in a terminal (such as sudo apt update && sudo apt install whatever) or the Synaptic Package Manager (my fave), a dependency check runs then all required files for the "package" (AKA app) are installed to your system. That's the easy part.

Depending on the nature of the package & the files it has, the app is placed in different directories. Welcome to Linux. (Actually, this is the same under the hood in MacOS X, you're just insulated from it by the MacOS interface.)

To see where the different files reside in your filesystem after installation, you can open Synaptic and right-click the package + details to see what files are in it.

Executable files in a package often live in directories with bin in their path, e.g. 

 /bin
 /usr/bin
 /usr/local/bin
 /usr/local/sbin
 /usr/sbin

where / means the root directory - the parent to all directories in your filesystem. They can also be installed underneath /opt .

Your environmental PATH variable shows which directories are searched for executables whenever you execute a program; in a terminal do echo $PATH to see that.

Once you've found the executables for the apps, you can make a directory to hold symlinks to the important apps, then make symlinks, following https://askubuntu.com/a/56340/197910

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