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    I think this answer does a great job of clarifying a common set of conventions, but this post from Rob Landley is a really great read if you want insight into the nonsense... lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html Commented Dec 13, 2012 at 23:45
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    refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml for the canonical current reference. The link by @kojiro is outdated and doesn't have the new spec. Commented May 3, 2016 at 18:58
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    Where do I put a bin I downloaded from the internet? From your description it sounds like it should go in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin. Is /usr/bin something I should never manually touch, and let only the package manager play with? Commented May 3, 2016 at 19:12
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    @DidierA. put it in ~/bin and add that directory to your PATH as a user... Thanks for the note, I deleted my seriously outdated comment. Commented May 3, 2016 at 21:22
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    I found the answer to the first part of my question here: superuser.com/a/238993/425838. Precedence is based on order in the system PATH variable, and echo $PATH for me shows /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games, which means that executables in /usr/local/bin take precedence over the ones in /usr/bin which take precedence over the ones in /bin. Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 21:10