Where should my program get installed?

[Martin V]

I've generated a new Linux program executable with Lazarus. There's some additional stuff for my program (a folder with HTML Help, a readme.txt file and so on). In Windows, all things are located in e.g. C:\Programs\MyProgram. In Linux, the executable and the related other stuff is located in different locations. What is the common way to install? How can the executable find the related other files?

I assume, there's a difference between programs which should be accessible in the terminal and programs which are executed via icon.

On my Ubuntu system, I have seen that lots of program executables are stored into

/usr/bin

and the related stuff is located in a folder which resides in
/usr/share

Is this a common behaviour in Linux? If yes, I could generate a zipfile for installation which holds /usr/bin/myprogram and /usr/bin/myprogram/*otherstuff.

Martin V.

[Troodon]

Quick answer: in depends on the Linux distro but in general, as your program <the_program> is not part of the distro itself, if it is to be shared by all users then you should install its files into a folder named <the_program> in one of the directories /usr/local/, /usr/local/library, or /usr/local/share.

[Ñuño_Martínez]

Here you have the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard which is used by most POSIX-like systems. It explains where to put executables, data and configuration files.