Unfortunately there’s no ‘easy’ option to choose install locations. The workflow you’re probably used to is picking the install location when running an install wizard on Windows. That’s pretty different from ‘apt install foo’, which installs foo according to the package information. You could dig into each individual package, and manually shuffle things around, but that may not be kind when updating or making changes.
Another option would be to stop using apt, and instead just dpkg all the things. You might find the --instdir option if you dig into the man pages enough, but that’s not a good idea to use globally.
The answer to your real problem is to set up LVM and manage your disk space a little more dynamically.
to my understanding, when I installed applications on linux, it never prompted me to know where I want the application installed. So I assume it uses some mounting points (ie: /lib, /bin, opt ??? and so on ???).
the point of my question is I dont want to fill my little ssd with the applications at one point and end up with no more space on my ssd. I just want to install all the application and everything it uses on my big 5Tb drive instead of my ssd.
I looked at that lvm link and I don’t think this is what I need. Although it could be useful if my ssd end up being filled to the brim and I need to move some partitions or some mounting points.
EDIT: I’ve heard of ssd cache but I don’t know about that one as I have almost no information nor experience towards that one. I haven’t messed enough with it
The short answer; yes, you can achieve the same thing in Linux.
The long answer; While you can achieve the same thing in Linux, it does require some fiddling around. The good news are that most of your Linux system will fit on a 128GB drive with ease. All your programs should fit on it no problem. When it comes to games or other large data chunks however, some ingenuity is required. It is possible to refer to a file system with multiple mount points, something that is known as bind mounting. Here is the basic gist of it:
For your particular use case, It seems that most games these days install in one of two locations; your home folder or /opt. Therefore I recommend the following partition scheme:
/ - a 128GB system drive, preferably M.2 form factor /mnt- Your main drive, will contain two folders, homeand opt /home - Bind mounted from /mnt/home /opt - Bind mounted from /mnt/opt
Linux does take a lot less space than windows does though. My ubuntu system takes up 36GB right now, all partitions included, with 24GB being my home folder.
I should of made a bit more search and found this which makes a lot of sense. Hopefully if I use LVM I could move things around but this should be what I could use:
The swap and tmp and var should be used on my 5tb since a lot of writing will be done and obviously I’ll put home on it.
Since its going to be a pc gaming machine and I’ll use steam, lutris, wine and probably others I assume or to my experience last time, they usually install on the home mount point. So I should be ok.
You can just set a custom mount point for /usr/local on your hdd, but most linux apps store so little in there its pointless. On top of that if you use a super popular distro you’ll just be installing snaps anyways. Or flatpaks.
What I do is my root partition is just 18-20 gb. Its all it needs bare min, but your actual install takes no space as well (4gb compared to the 80gb of bloat with your 2gb windows system). So all that extra space is left for symlinks, app storage, etc.
Then, if theres more space, I make swap, efi if I need it, and a /work and /track or music partition (I’m picking up amiga habits), then whatever I want /home on its always separate. Steam games go in /home under .steam/steam/steamapps/common, so its not like you actually have to give a shit about /usr/local.
If somehow you install enough apps that you use all of root, god help you.