Where is everything I install stored?

Question

I have Ubuntu 14.04 and I never made any disk partitions.I'm trying to ask that if a install a certain game or program from Ubuntu Software Center, where exactly does it go? I have this game that I downloaded from the Software center but now that I need to apply mods, I really don't know where the game is stored. I even tried searching for it but only the launcher that was used to install the game appears in the search results.

Answer 1

You can type in the command line

whereis gimp

To see where gimp is installed. Replace with the name of the program you want to find. This command will usually return multiple locations, as applications have multiple files they use to run on your system. To see only the program binary itself use

which gimp

Programs you install yourself might go in /usr/local or /opt as well as /usr/bin /usr/lib and /usr/share

If you want a really long list ;)

locate gimp

(for a somewhat shorter list use locate -b gimp which only show paths that end in gimp)

You can launch the application by typing...

gimp

Note: the locate command uses a periodically regenerated database, so if you're looking for something you've only just installed, you must first run sudo updatedb for locate to find it.

Answer 2

User program/games are stored in /usr/bin directory. The /bin directory stores main (important) programs (binaries) that all users need. Look at the answer to this question for more details about linux filesystem layout: How to understand the Ubuntu file system layout?