rpm vs tar install locations

[Jeff A. Earickson]

Gang,

I'm looking at moving my MailScanner system from a physical
Solaris 10 box to a virtual (vmware) Redhat system.  Any
advice and gotchas would be helpful.

I've got to ask.  I got my Redhat box set up, took a snapshot
of the base system, then ran the rpm install (saved output via
the script command), rolled back to the snapshot, and then did
a tar install (also saved output).  Why do the rpm's go into
/usr, while the tarfile goes into /opt?  Frankly, I like it in
/opt a whole lot better...

Jeff Earickson
Colby College