>>40
/opt is for programs that have bizarre and/or retarded hierarchies that, for whatever reason, can't be reshaped to fit a standard filesystem layout. It has nothing at all to do with
$PATH, and Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. all have perfectly normal package hierarchies. Further, if you have multiple versions, you can install them all side by side in
/usr without having to worry about collisions, because each version has its own subdirectory layout inside
/usr/lib,
/usr/include,
/usr/share, etc. You'd just rename the binaries to
/usr/bin/python2.5,
/usr/bin/python2.6, etc. There is no practical reason whatsoever for installing them into
/opt.