Which directory contains additional information about installed packages?

The correct answer is D. /usr/share/doc. See the full explanation below for the reasoning.

Question

Which directory contains additional information about installed packages?

Options

A/usr/share/documentation
B/usr/local/share/documentation
C/usr/local/doc
D/usr/share/doc
E/usr/packages/doc

How the community answered

(61 responses)

A
2% (1)
B
7% (4)
C
3% (2)
D
77% (47)
E
11% (7)

Community Discussion

Marit C.Apr 12, 2026

D is the right answer. The FHS puts supplementary package documentation, changelogs, copyright files, and README variants under /usr/share/doc, with each package getting its own subdirectory named after it, something like /usr/share/doc/openssh-server. The /usr/share tree is specifically reserved for architecture-independent read-only data that can be shared across hosts, which is exactly the right place for docs that do not vary by arch. The other options are either nonexistent on any standard distro or, in the case of /usr/local/share, reserved for locally installed software outside the package manager.

Viktor S.Apr 13, 2026

Worth hammering home why /usr/local/share trips people up: /usr/local mirrors the /usr layout deliberately, so the structure looks identical and you have to know the ownership rule, package manager owns /usr, sysadmin owns /usr/local, and that distinction is what actually saves you when you are debugging something installed by hand that conflicts with a packaged version.

Viktor S.Apr 2, 2026

D is right. On any LSB-compliant Linux system, /usr/share/doc is where package managers like apt and rpm drop READMEs, changelogs, and copyright files after installation, which is exactly why knowing the path matters on the job, not just on the exam.

Samuel O.Mar 29, 2026

The phrasing "additional information" is a little loose since /usr/share/doc holds READMEs, changelogs, license files, and examples that ship with packages, not just some vague extra data, but the answer they are looking for is D. Option A trips up people who half-remember the path because "documentation" sounds right until you realize that directory simply does not exist on a standard Linux system.

Nina C.Mar 31, 2026

Yeah, and what helped it click for me was actually running ls on /usr/share/doc and seeing a separate subfolder for every installed package, because that structure makes it obvious this is per-package documentation rather than some system-wide miscellaneous folder.

Nina C.Mar 25, 2026

Almost picked A, but /usr/share/doc is the FHS standard path.

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