"Richard O'Keefe"
This is good advice (/usr/local is fine though).
Actually, no, it isn't. To start with, these days it's chock full of stuff which is hardly less critical for system operation than anything you'll find in /bin.
More importantly, /usr/local is a bugger to manage by hand, even if the sources came with uninstall capabilities, chances are they're not around, anymore, or messed up. I prefer to have stuff in /opt/<package name>, with links to the binaries in /opt/bin. Manual user installs go into ~/opt, one-file stuff (mostly self-written) into ~/bin. There's also some scripts in ~/dos to start some games with dosbox, but those don't count. -- (c) this sig last receiving data processing entity. Inspect headers for copyright history. All rights reserved. Copying, hiring, renting, performance and/or quoting of this signature prohibited.