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Under linux, I launch a software by typing, e.g., fluidplot. How can I find the installation path for this software?

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Possible duplicate of 18472 – faif Aug 25 '11 at 12:51

2 Answers

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You can use:

which fluidpoint

to see where it is executing from (if it's in your $PATH). Or:

find / -name fluidpoint 2> /dev/null

to look for a file named fluipoint and redirect errors on virtual filesystems.

Usually they are in /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin or ~ as a hidden directory.

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or check to see if the program is actually an alias, e.g. alias fluidpoint, – Chad Feller Aug 25 '11 at 2:56
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@Chad Some versions of which (e.g. the one built in to ZSH) will do that for you – Michael Mrozek♦ Aug 25 '11 at 3:32
@Michael excellent to know. Because of your comment, I just discovered that newer versions of bash also do this. +1 to your comment. – Chad Feller Aug 25 '11 at 4:06
The "Usually they are ..." line is pretty disingenuous, additional software should be in /opt/* or /usr/local/bin. ~ is your home directory, I'm confused why you call it "hidden". – Steve-o Aug 25 '11 at 5:24
Sorry to be ambiguous, I mean ~/.dir. The hidden directory is below the home directory. And I completely forgot about /usr/local/bin dop. – MaxMackie Aug 25 '11 at 5:35
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If you use an RPM based distribution (CentOS, RHEL, SUSE, openSUSE) you can use rpm -ql

Example:

rpm -ql findutils
/bin/find
/usr/bin/find
/usr/bin/xargs
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/README
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/THANKS
/usr/share/doc/packages/findutils/TODO
/usr/share/info/find.info.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/find.1.gz

Things aren't installed to locations in the Linux/UNIX world like they are in the Windows (and even somewhat in the Mac) world. They are more distributed. Binaries are in /bin or /sbin, libraries are in /lib, icons/graphics/docs are in /share, configuration is in /etc and program data is in /var. The /bin,lib,sbin contain the core applications needed for booting and the /usr contains all the other user and system applications

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